


Left Behind

by RadioactiveRicecake



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Conkri - Freeform, F/M, GamTav - Freeform, Kurlin, Kurmit, Meuloz, Scourgecest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-13 11:25:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3379766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadioactiveRicecake/pseuds/RadioactiveRicecake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Civil war. Resistance. Explosions. Kaboom. Lord English being a dick. Kurloz being... Kurloz. And also sort of a dick. Meulin being a cat. Wow. We are all blown away by this stunning revelation. Teenagers fighting although that should technically be illegal. Oh well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peter Pan syndrome

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!  
> Hmmm, I don't have much to say here.  
> I'm the best at writing introductions. Yes I am. Yes I--  
> Enjoy :D

The very first scream awoke Meulin and rang in her brain for a few seconds before she could make sense of what was happening.  
Another scream. And another. And another. Closer each time, as if emitted by a moaning creature crawling towards her house.  
Obviously, something was wrong, very wrong.  
She felt her breathing accelerate and a tight knot form in her stomach. She threw her warm blanket on the floor and jumped out of bed, panicking, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening outside through the window. Her body was convulsing violently. The door opened suddenly, the outline of her mother standing in the light of the corridor.  
“Mom!”  
“Meulin! You have to get out of here. NOW.”  
Before she could open her mouth and ask the many questions that were burning her tongue, the woman grabbed her by the hand and flung her out of the bedroom. She pushed her along the corridor, towards the kitchen. “Leave by the backdoor. Take my sweater, there you go sweetie. Now leave, I’ll see you later.”  
“MOM! What’s happening?”  
An explosion shook the house and a few glasses fell on the floor, shattering in small pieces. She grabbed her mother by the shoulders and placed her head on her neck, holding her as strong as she could, feeling her warmth against her forehead.  
“What’s going on?” She realised that tears were running down her cheeks.  
“There’s no time, honey. The army is raiding the village. You need to leave now, and I’ll see you when everything is calm again, all right?” She pulled herself out of the grasp, and pushed her daughter out of the house.  
“But what are you going to do?”  
“I’ll be fine! You need to go somewhere safe. And you know I don’t run as fast as you do, I’ll slow you down. Now, off you go.” She winked and closed the door behind her.  
Meulin saw the desolated expression on her mother’s face, although she was desperately trying to conceal it.  
She ran a few steps, and turned around, slowly, as deep inside she already knew what she was going to see behind. She knew every detail, every colours. Still, she looked. With the shouts and pleads for mercy came a bright fire from the other side of the village, as well as the merry barks of soldiers walking along. Her village, her world was burning.  
How could she possibly leave without her mother? She stumbled into her house once again, screaming her name, looking frenetically in every single room. “MOM! MOOOOM!” But she was nowhere to be found. The young girl heard the singing men come alarmingly close; she forgot for an instant that she was atheist and mumbled a quick prayer for her beloved mother. She turned around and began running in the opposite direction of the fire, forcing herself to breath slowly and regularly although her lungs were screaming for more air.  
The shouts were more and more distant with each step she took, each inhale, each exhale. The cool darkness of the night took over the warm light of the fire. The young girl smiled; she always loved night running, she loved the silence, the wind.  
“What’s happening, dad? Why is there a fire over there?” A kid was looking at his father, worried. The adult turned pale and his mouth opened, without any sound escaping from it.  
She felt like she was punched in the stomach, as she remembered that this was not a night running session. The comfortable feeling that had settled in her head suddenly collapsed. How could she forget something like that? The fire, the sound of children crying, the soldiers, were literally right behind her. She turned towards the father and screamed; “CAT AWAY!” There was no reaction coming from the adult; either he did not understand, or he was too absorbed by the doom coming towards them all. The small child shook his sleeve. “Dad! We need to leave, now!” The father snapped out and came back to reality; he took the child in his arms and ran in the opposite direction. Meulin felt a feeling of relief spreading through her body. She ran again, screaming at the houses, warning them of the impeding fire: many burst out of their houses to follow her. She knew the end of the village approached: in less than two minutes they could hide in the forest and be out of the soldiers’ reach. She turned around a corner… And fell on a line of soldiers. They were all waiting patiently, a ferocious smile on all of their faces, barring the road with their armoured bodies.  
At their feet some inhabitants were on their knees, head facing the ground, held by soldiers that were proud to display their innocent preys. The father and his child were kneeling next to each other; loneliness distorted their faces.  
Meulin felt a gush of angst for the two of them. “I’m so sorry”, she whispered, before attacking the soldiers.

The teenager was thrown in the truck tired and covered in bruises. “We would have killed you if you weren’t so pretty,” said a soldier right before pushing her in the dark of the vehicle. “But the ones in town will be pleased to have a sexy ladaaaaay.” She hissed at his ugly unshaved face; the door closed with a loud clap. She sprawled down on the metal ground, exhausted.  
“Meulin?” said a voice. “Meulin Leijon?”  
The young girl used all the energy she had left to raise her head towards the woman who spoke. “M… Maggie?” A smile appeared on her face, and the excitement chased the pain away. “Maggie! You’re alive!” She threw herself in the arms of the old lady and giggled. “I’m so happy to see you!”  
“I am so glad to see you too, my child! Where is your mother?”  
Sadness invaded her body suddenly; emotions always came quickly, and leave as fast as they came.  
“I don’t know!” She mumbled. “It’s all so confursing… I don’t know what happened!” She looked deep in Maggie’s eyes, trying to find an answer, but none came. She crawled in a corner miserably. “I’ll nefur know what happened…” Her eyes closed, and opened again with a whole new emotion. “But it’s fine! I’m sure she survived!” She smiled and put her head on the old woman’s lap, and slept right away as a soft purring escaped from her lips.

__

 

The trip was long and uncomfortable. The truck was small and there were fourteen of them, men, women and children. They all knew each other (more or less) as they lived in the same place, yet the time spent in this shaking metal box was strangely quiet. None of the villagers felt like speaking; they would listen to Margaret and Meulin with a miserable smile on their faces. The elder told stories and Meulin spent hours commenting on them, studying each character in all its depths and which relationship they could potentially have with whom. When she was done, Maggie told another story, the young girl commented, and so the cycle continued for hours and hours; finally, the three kids who were hiding behind their fathers and mothers began to join in, inventing more stories based on Maggie’s ones, falling in love or falling in hate with the characters. Everything was done in the dark; the few rays of light passing through the split of the door were barely lightening the space enough for them to see each other’s outlines. Yet Meulin was absolutely pleased, and for a moment forgot that she was stuck in a truck belonging to an army that was not exactly concerned by her well-being. They finally arrived to their destination; the car stopped brutally and, twenty minutes afterwards, a soldier opened the squeaky door. Blinded, they protected their eyes from the light of noon, but they did not have time to adapt since a soldier shouted with a hoarse voice “Get outta here, ya little shits!” Meulin felt a throbbing pain in her cheek as she was thrown against the concrete. The man threatened to “kick the hell outta you” if they did not stand up right now, so they all stood, their legs shaking of the twelve-ish hours spent in the van, the sun burning their retina. Two men came from behind and told them to go in a building behind them. One of them stopped Meulin and Maggie with his truncheon before they could follow the rest, snapping his tongue against his teeth. “You,” he said pointing at the old one, “Are going over there. We have a special place for people as old as you.” The other chortled; Maggie strengthened her back and looked deep into the soldier’s eyes. “There’s a special place in Hell for people like you.” The girl realised how terrifying Maggie suddenly was. She had acquired a petrifying aura, and the strong man could only mumble “over there”. She turned towards Meulin and smiled gently. “Goodbye, my child. I know you’ll be all right, I can feel it in my old bones.”  
“I know you’ll be all right too!” she answered.  
The woman laughed. “Your eyes are full of hope, it is such a pleasant sigh. And yes, I will be all right. I am tired of this place, I am gladly leaving it!” She threw one last deadly look towards the man, and began walking bravely to the building.  
When she was gone, the soldiers finally regained their courage and faced Meulin. “And you… are coming with us.”  
The first soldier seemed startled, and spoke with a fearful voice: “You’re not gonna…” “Of course we’re gonna,” countered the other. “You wanna?” he added with a smirk.  
“That is just… No, I won’t be a part of it” he said with a truly scandalized look on his face. “It’s… sick.”  
“Nah, it’s not. A man has his needs”  
“No! this is… arrrrg… But… If you wanna do it, ask permission from the chief first.”  
“Yeah, yeah… Jonas, you coming?”  
“With pleasure,” replied the third one.  
The two of them pushed the girl in front of them and walked towards a small office on the side. Four others were standing in front of the glass door.  
“Hey, Jonas, Flint! Aaaand who’s the bitch?”  
“I am not a bitch” snarled Meulin, showing her teeth and trying to look as wild as possible. She was quickly stopped by a violent slap given by one of them.  
“You’ll shut up now, we like our bitches silent” he cackled while the others laughed.  
“Anyways,” said the one who was called Jonas, “We were going to… y’know…” he winked and the other soldiers’ faces seem to enlighten when they understood.  
“Wh… can we come?”  
“Yeah! Of course. The more we are, the better it is. Just gotta ask the chief’s permission.”  
“We’ll watch her close.”  
“What is that, a tail???”  
Flint went in through the small door while the other shook with impatience. Meulin didn’t really understand the situation, which annoyed her a lot – she had very bad understanding capacities for a 16 years old – so she just proceeded to examine the base more closely. It wasn’t a base, really, it was more of a city in ruins that the army tried to reconvert into something looking more or less like a base. The buildings’ holes were covered with dirty canvases, a deplorable restitution of their initial state. The whole city was blackened by an ancient fire, and it was completely devoid of civilian inhabitants. All the metal were rusted, the shops panels whining slowly in the wind. The ground was covered in a soft layer of grey ashes.  
Meulin had heard about these brunt out cities; although the television was cut down since a few years and the young girl never went very far from her village, travellers brought the news that America was in ruins. “The army has destroyed everything”, they said. “They are annihilating the east of the country. We can thank God the west is still resisting.” Her village was right in the frontier, between the East that had capitulated to the tyrant and the west where the resistance grew and thrived. The truth was, the west did not always resist. When the civil war had started, the army had invaded the whole of America – only then were they pushed away by the Rebels. The west was in an advanced state of destruction, yet it was nothing compared to the east. The east didn’t even look like an inhabited place anymore.  
The soldier came back with a smile on his face. “He said yeah, but we have to do it in the forest. ‘No disturbin the camp,’ he said. ” The others shouted in triumph as they brutally pushed her towards the edge of the city. The six soldiers and Meulin began walking towards the hill, deeper and deeper inside the forest.  
“Where are we going?” snapped the girl after twenty minutes of walking in the trees. “Let me go with the others!” She tried to look tall and dangerous; hatred was burning her eyes, yet all they did was laugh and joke around. Finally, after another fifteen minutes, soldier Flint raised his hand suddenly, stopping their small group at once. He turned towards her and smiled.  
“Here.”  
A cable approached his throat, winding around it like an icy snake. Choking the life out of him.  
A look of complete surprise arose on his face, his mouth slightly open, one of his fingers pointing the cable as if to politely ask “please, would you have the kindness to tell me why on earth this maleficent piece of string is congesting me to death?”  
Another cable leapt out of the bush behind the young man, this time catching his hand; the owner of the weapon pulled on tight, and Flint’s hand came hurtling to his face, knocking himself unconscious.  
And then everything became confusion. People began to spread from behind the trees, from inside the bushes, from over their heads; the soldiers tried to shoot at these new assailants, in vain. Boys and girls were flying around the group of soldiers. A circular saw yielded with a chain came flying through the air, cutting a soldier neatly at his waist. Both parts of the body fell with a squishing sound, and a young woman covered in tattoos appeared behind the corpse, smiling savagely, the piercings on her face shining with the light going through the leaves. The sun coming from behind gave to her pale body a strange aura. Meulin didn’t even have time to say a thing before the soldier to her left was stabbed several times by a girl with shiny red glasses, while the one behind her was impaled on a… Trident?  
Meulin stared at all this agitation, astonished. They were all kids with weird weapons, yet they were kicking the shit out of these fully armed soldiers. She watched the show with delight, until she realised the skeleton in the background.  
Well, he wasn’t really a skeleton, but rather a teenager with a skeleton costume. His curly hair was a brown turmoil dancing all around his head. She looked closer; he was the one with the cables. All his members were attached to those of the soldiers he was fighting, a few feet away from him; his hands were joined to the adult’s hands, his knees to the adult’s knees, etc. As he moved around the soldier was forced by the cables to do the exact same gestures. So the young adult pulled, pushed, made the man hit himself, again and again, fall on the floor, get back up, crush himself against a tree.  
Just like a puppeteer, thought Meulin. That is absolutely pawesome.  
The soldier brutally pulled on this left hand, destabilizing the skeleton guy for less than a second, yet that was enough for the soldier to take back the control of his body. He turned brutally, his muscles winning the fight over the thin boy, and faced him.  
Before he could do anything, Meulin had already smashed the back of his skull with a stone. The puppet fell on the ground like a soaked mop while the puppeteer looked and smiled. He straightened his back and nodded gently to the girl.  
He seemed to have come right out of a Tim Burton movie.  
Abnormally tall and abnormally thin, the white make up covering his face formed a skull on his light-brown skin. A skeleton outfit covered his entire body, his crotch hidden by purple shorts.  
Omg. You’re gorgeously creepy.  
“Yo, gurl!”  
Meulin reluctantly looked behind; the girl who called her had two long, long braids who ran at her back and continued long after they touched the ground. She opened her mouth, incredulous.  
“What?” said the other one.  
“Your braids!!!!!!!!! Omg!!! They’re so wonderfuuuuuuuuur!!” She shook her fists in excitement.  
“Wonderfur…?”  
“And all your weapons, and the mewment where you sliced the guy in two halves? You were all pouncing and screaming and… Omg! That was the coolest thing efur!”  
She realised that the eight attackers were now staring at her in bewilderment. She looked at her body, checking if anything was wrong.  
“What’s the purroblem?”  
Nobody said anything; they were all consulting each other through looks, wondering whether they should say anything or not. Finally, a tall girl spoke in a calm and strangely comforting voice.  
“I think my friends and I expected to find you quite… traumatised after the recent events.”  
“Why? Wait a minute,” she added before the other could say anything, “You look a lot like her!” Meulin pointed towards the girl with the tattoos whose weapon was a circular saw. “Are you guys… twins?”  
“Uhm… Yes we are in fact twins.”  
“You look alike!”  
“Yeah, that’s what twins are” said the one with the red glasses. She was quite small, with brown hair falling right under her shoulder blade; her posture was extremely steady, as if even a boulder thrown in her direction could not maker her flinch.  
“Where do you come from?” Asked another girl.  
“Are you a parking ticket? Because you look expensivwe.”  
“That was the most pitiful pick up line I have ever heard coming out of your wretched mouth.”  
“Cronus, shall I remind you of the existence of your loving partner?”  
“Yeah, stop flirting with her! It’s pathetiiiiiiiic!”  
“Does she have a cat tail?”  
“Guys! Can we please at least pretend to be cool?”  
“HEY EVERYMOBY” said the angry one with the braids. “Clam the fuck down.”  
“Are you doing FISH PUNS?????” asked Meulin with a piercing voice. “That is adorapawl!”  
“We’re goin back to the glubbin camp NOW.” She turned around and began walking straight ahead.  
The kids divided themselves in smaller groups and began to follow what seemed to be their leader; Meulin saw that the red glasses one had assembled her two knives into the canes blind people usually use, right before a stupid-looking guy blocked her vision. He was chewing a cigarette that was not even lit up, and was uncomfortably close to the girl, invading her personal space.  
“Hey, you” he said with a wink.  
“Hello!” answered the young girl, faking a smile.  
“Vwell, I think vwe began our relationship on a bad hand. I’m Cronus.”  
“Hey, Cronus!”  
“So, vwat kind of music do you--”  
“Why are you meowing like that? Why are you doing those clawful wobbly sounds all the time?”  
“Vwowv there! Can you please be more sensitivwe about my quirk?”  
“Uuuuh pawy?”  
“I’m such a nice guy and you just come towvards me and aggress me with your speech stereotypes?”  
“Wait a minute, YOU came--”  
“I mean like, seriously? I barely know you!”  
“You came towards me and I wasn’t aggressive I was just--”  
“And I don’t need that, I just came out of a sevwere depression. You’ll nevwer evwen knowv such a horrible state. People wvould always givwe me all these responsibilities, I beliewve they thought I was the perfect profile for a leader, but I just couldn’t, you knowv? I was drowvning so deep under the layers and layers of pressure that I lost trace of vwho I really was inside. I found a consolidation of my true personality through music, but evweryone now thinks I’m some kind of superhero that can do evwerything and they just can’t understand that a guy needs to clam – sorry, calm – down from time to time, and divwe into his art with all his soul. Evweryone think I’m so superior, and I’m havwing such a hard time showving to evweryone that you know, hey, I’m just another normal guy? And they’re all like --”  
Meulin realised half-way though that she didn’t actually give one single fuck. Not one. So she smiled and simply walked away. That worked every single time. Someone walking away of a conversation without any explanation would systematically shock people; they would stop speaking, stare at her with wide eyes and a scandalized expression on their faces, but in the end what could they do? Run after her and force their useless speech directly inside her brain? Actually, Meulin did have strong doubts about Cronus, believing until she was safely next to the blind girl that he would, in fact, come after her.  
“What’s with the cat tail?” said the one hiding behind her glasses.  
“What cat tail?”  
“Shhhhhhhh!” the girl put her finger on her mouth and began walking faster and discreetly. Meulin followed her example, suddenly very worried by the situation; she bit one of her nails off, realising that her hand was shaking. She had the horrible impression of being… followed. She could feel a presence up in the tree to her left, in the bushes behind her, in the cavity in front of her. Who, or rather what, could it be? The feeling of protection provided by all the brave kids who saved her from the soldiers began to worn off. Why aren’t they doing anything? She and the blind girl walked in a state of uncontrolled tension during an hour, or was it a minute? Meulin never really knew how to estimate the time. Her mind saw Time as something quite irrelevant – partly because she never understood how to read a watch (she got fascinated by the ticking every single time and forgot what was her initial intention), partly because she couldn’t give less of a fuck. With each step they took, another part of her body began shaking… and the girl with glasses stopped abruptly. She turned slowly, slowly, as if she was expecting nothing less than a giant hound with a hundred legs speaking fluent German to smile behind them and ask them if they wanted cappuccino. Meulin imagined the monster and felt a shiver of horror running through her spine. German had always been a language that terrified her.  
The other one turned towards her. “Yeah. I think it’s following us.”  
“What??? What??”  
The girl punched Meulin’s shoulder and giggled uncontrollably. “Your tail, dumbass!”  
Meulin screamed and jumped out of fright, until she realised the terror she had stored in her guts was nothing more than a joke. She let it explode and flow out of her through a series of hysterical chuckles. The two of them had to stop to lie down on the floor, laughing until their stomachs hurt, tears in their eyes and a growing pain in their brains.  
Once the storm over, they brushed their tears off and began walking faster to catch up with the group.  
“I furgot about that!” she stroked the blue tail fixed to her skirt.  
“Why do you wear a tail? I guess it goes with the whole cat puns thing.”  
“I… don’t… remempurr…” a gush of sadness went through her face. It disappeared as soon as it came to make place to a smile. “Oh yeah, wait, I do! It was a thing in my village. Efurryone would wear cat things and do cat puns! It was a huge trend! But… then it just stopped. It was so sad! I decided to purrsevere. They all thought I was some kind of weirdo… But oh well! I’m the cool cat!” She giggled and asked “Are you blind? Fur real? Oh and what’s your name?”  
“I’m Terezi, and yes, I am blind”  
“But… I paw you fight! How do you do that?”  
“I just fight, cool cat!”  
“Without your vision?”  
“Yeah, without my vision. All right, look. People tend to forget that we have five senses. They believe without vision, everything is lost. Well they’re wrong! Vision is one fifth of our senses; if you loose it, only one fifth of your perception leaves.”  
“Is it really this easy?”  
“Well, yeah. I just avoided this rock without even touching it with my cane, I know you have a tail and I know that you’re tall, that you’re wearing a knee-length skirt, a jacket, and no bra. You spent some time in an uncomfortable army truck. You have a tendency to completely forget your environment and what is happening around you.”  
“Oh my god! How did you know all that?”  
“Because I’m good, that’s why!” said Terezi excitedly. “I’m the Sherlock Holmes of the resistance. I heard you walk around the rock, I heard John say you had a tail, when you speak it comes from a point that is at the height of my forehead so you are taller than me, your skirt makes familiar skirt noises when you walk, earlier I skimmed your back and didn’t feel any bra but I felt the jean texture of your jacket, your smell is a mix of sweat and petrol, I guessed you’ve been in a car, since you came with soldiers I’m thinking military truck, and they’re never comfortable, are they?” she said that all at once, barely breathing while enouncing her speech, with no hesitation whatsoever, a smooth and delighted voice. Benedict Cumberbatch would be proud.  
“Wow! That was impuressive! Wait a minute, what about the environment thing?”  
“The fact that you don’t see your surroundings? Well, we are unknown people taking you to an unknown place, fighting with bizarre weapons and looking frankly weird as fuck, and you still haven’t asked one single question about it all.”  
Meulin’s look turned into wonderment while Terezi smiled with a creepy grin.  
“Hey! Stop flirting with her!”  
The voice came from behind them, released by a girl wearing matching blue clothes. Everything was thin about her: thin body, thin face, thin lips, thin nose. She was definitely attractive, yet strangely repulsive. Meulin supposed some could find her scary. Terezi turned around and shouted an aggressive “Shut up you spider freak!” before throwing a passionate glance to the blue girl. “Gotta go” she said to Meulin, who clearly realised the level of excitation of the girl rose in a matter of seconds. “Hope you have fun without me. Go see Kanaya, she’ll explain everything!” The blind girl didn’t even throw a look at Meulin before running – or, rather, walking as fast as she could – towards the “spider freak”. She looked around her, absent-minded, wondering who were these people. She dwelled on the questions that Terezi awoke in her mind; how could she forget to ask where they were going? Who they were? She had learned long ago that her own memory was not to be trusted. She had learned that her mind was unreliable, unpredictable… yet sometimes it felt so wrong, so horribly unfair. She had the constant feeling that her consciousness was slipping between her fingers, while she was desperately trying to keep it in control. How do you keep a wave up on the sand. She smiled at her own reference and realised that one of the twins was waving at her. Meulin ran towards her and followed the sisters’ pace.  
“I am pleased that you came seeking our company” said the one without the tattoos. “My name is Kanaya, and here is my twin sister Porrim.”  
“Hey!” said the other one.  
They both looked very much alike, although the feelings they conveyed were quite opposite. Kanaya’s body was generally relaxed, her shoulders and her back free of any tension, her hands waving peacefully in the air as she walked. Porrim, on the other hand, had a defying posture; she stood proud, and the look in her eyes seemed to dare anyone to contradict her words. Her steps were large and imposing. The black, swirling lines of her tattoos were covering her arms, falling down her chest. Piercings were decorating her eyebrows and her bottom lips.  
“I like you” said Meulin to the two girls with a cheerful smile.  
“Oh… We appreciate this compliment” answered Kanaya. “I do believe many questions are burning your tongue?”  
“Yeah! Oh my god you guys are so clawesome! Anyways. So who are you? Where are we going, to some kind of secret base under the ground? Houses in the trees? Are we taking a purricopter and flying the hell out of here?”  
“Feel free to ask more questions, I don’t have enough of them yet. That was ironical” she added.  
Meulin looked at her with an overly serious expression before groaning, “you confuse me.”  
“You seem to be unaware of the basic principle of irony. It is fine. We are a part of the resistance taking place in the west of the United States of America at this precise moment. Are you conscious of the current situation of our beloved country?”  
“Totally! Oh, wait, no.”  
“Do not worry, that is the situation of pretty much the whole nation. With Internet and the television out of our every day life, it became hard to document ourselves on the actuality. I will try to keep it short as I am sure Aranea will love explaining the state of this war in its furthest details. Do you remember Lord English?”  
“Oh, yeah! He was the hissterical man that ran for the elections? He was a mewn guy, right?”  
“Mewn? Oh, mean. Lord, you equal Meenah in her perseverance to place a minimum of three puns per sentence.  
“Yes, he was, indeed, a treacherous man with a thirst for power and anti-democratic ideals. The fool wants to establish a cast system based on solely physical appearances. He took over the state with the help of the army, and a resistance rose in the east. It quickly expanded with the help of the populations who refused the reign of this tyrant. Nowadays the resistance is stable, controlling no less than one third of the nation, fuelled by the factories that still work for our cause. The leader of the resistance is called The Signless – you probably heard about him? – and his little brother, Karkat Vantas, decided to mount a small group of resistance of his own, composed of teenagers and even children that did not have a part in the resistance although they could fight.”  
“Why did they not have a paw in the resistance?”  
“Our leader does not want the children to be endangered by the fight. It is one of his greatest fears. We were hidden in abandoned cities, living useless existences until Karkat came and took us right at the border of the resistance, where we could fight and prove we were ready to integrate the movement. We are now walking towards our base.”  
Kanaya realised the girl wearing a tail was walking with her head down, grief stamped on her face and watery eyes.  
“Is there something wrong?”  
“The people. They were slaughtered, right?”  
“Slaughter is a sweet word for it. The army killed more than half of the total population of America, in unspeakable ways. The ones who lived were made into slaves. Those who are in the best physical state are forced to breed and create a new generation of better men. It is Nazism all over again.”  
“We remember the colour of Earth” mumbled Porrim, a fist on her heart.  
“You see, Lord English considers that the USA are overpopulated and do not need so much ‘low casts crap’, pardon my expression. There are just enough people to work and sustain the army; the rest is ‘unnecessary’.”  
“How could the army do that? How could the soldiers have such an atrocious catitude?”  
“That… is something we ignore. We are aware, of course, that such a strange behaviour comes from a source, a root, a problem, anything. We are aware that it is not natural, that something is provoking it. But the problem is… we ignore what is this source.”  
They walked silently during a few minutes, pondering what they just said, the despair of their nation on their backs.  
“Well, I’m sure we’ll catch the answer in due time” she said enthusiastically.  
“Catch. Nice pun”  
“Thanks, Porrim! Years of pracatctis is the key to success!”  
Meulin spent the next four hours walking from person to person, from group to group. She had an eccentric conversation with a boy with a high-pitched voice, a fake moustache and ample clothes, boy that greeted her with a hand buzzer prank. He hooted compulsively when her face contorted due to the discharge. “Hoo hoo hoo! This prank never gets old.” His name was John. Meulin noticed a rapid emotion running through his face when he told her his name. Was it… pain?  
She also spent quite a lot of her time with their leader (“I’m not the reel captain tho but glub it”), Meenah, a short girl with very black hair and a smile that could slightly creep out anyone who would dare to look at her in the eyes. She complained about the lack of gold due to the shortages during a little more than an hour. “Yep I’m actshoally a rich chilla person” she confessed. “But hey we all grow glubbin tired of our parents. I heard my mom carping about me takin over her company cuz she had some more important fins to do so I thought fuck that shit and I left.”  
“You left your house? Omg that’s crazy! Where did you go?”  
“I went to the resistance and I thought that they’ll be all happy to have me, yknow, w’me bein the daughter of the woman that financed – nice pun me – the whole campaign of English.”  
“Your mom’s on English’s side!”  
“She’s the glubbin empress so yeah. The bitch is one of the bad guys.”  
“So how come you’re the cattain now?”  
“Dunno. I had the stuff.”  
“No, you had a boyfriend” said john with a smirk.  
“Stfu!”  
“BOYFRIEND!” said Meulin excitedly. “Who is he? Omg I want to know EFURRYTHING about him!”  
“He’s NOT my boyfrond!”  
“I can see you’re lyiiiing!”  
“He’s not! Anyways, we’re nearly here.”  
Without any warning, she kicked hard into the trunk of a tree, releasing herself of the frustration brought by the conversation – too hard. Meulin saw tears of pain gushing in her eyes as she bit her lips and massaged her numb foot. She thought the group would continue without interruption, but they all stopped beneath the tree, obviously waiting for something. Before she could ask, Meenah screamed a powerful “Hey dickhead get outta here”, and the slim face of a teenager appeared up in the tree.  
“What?” he said, widely irritated.  
Meulin looked closer and realised there was a platform hiding up there, where the boy was standing. It was exactly the same colour as the tree and partly covered in leaves; if she did not know someone was standing there she would have never seen it.  
“Stop bein useless and send a message to crabby shouty. Tell’im we’re comin, and we got some fish lost in the sea. Meulin Leijon, check her out.”  
“No!”  
“What?”  
“No! I won’t obey your shitty orders. I want to go back to the camp.”  
“Denied. Now send the glubbin message you fuck. Ofishial order.”  
“Nope.”  
“Aaaarh! You doofish!”  
“I won’t do it, there’s no need to fucking swear about it.”  
“It’s your punishment, stayin up there. That’s what you get for tryin to flirt w’me with the worse pick up lines evar. Shelliously, horrible. Even Cronus can’t compete with ya.”  
“Oh, well sorry if Miss Vanity was offended by a joke, but my pick up lines are good. You’re just bitter and susceptible. Now just get someone up here, I’ve been here since two fucking days I’m sick of it.”  
“Fin! Send the message and I’ll send someone!”  
“Thank you!” said the exasperated teen. He disappeared in the little hut placed on the platform; Meulin saw an arrow leave it with a shoooo.  
“Your authority is impressive, Ô impetuous leader” said a voice behind her. Meulin smiled and turned around; he was the only one she did not talk to yet.  
The boy dressed with a skeleton costume. His voice was deep and soothing; a amused tone danced in each of his words spoken with a distinguishable British accent. His eyes were opened wide in an uncanny stare; they were darker than his olive skin, almost ink-black. A tiny smile stretched his lips, making the whole face inscrutable. His dark corkscrew hair was spreading everywhere around his head, floating around him like a frizzy spirit. His white make up in the form of a skull, some ruined 14-holes doc Marteens whose bits and pieces were desperately sewn together with some purple thread completed the disguise.  
“Clam up puppet freak” answered Meenah.  
“I shall take those treasurable words and consider them as a praise to my glorious mother fucking person.” He smiled frankly and walked in front of them alone. Cronus, who was also alone, ran to him and began talking to the skeleton freak. Cronus spoke, and spoke again, and once again, while the other was not pronouncing a single word. Eventually, he grew tired and left him after shouting a “Vwell FUCK YOU” in his direction.  
“I hate it vwhen he plays mute” Cronus mumbled when he came near Meenah, John and Meulin.  
“Oh dear, do you still believe anyone wishes to converse with you?”  
“John! Vwhy vwould you say that? You knovw howv sensitiwve of a guy I am and I really think you shouldn’t play with that! Vwould you like me to make comments on your sensitiwve area?”  
John’s face suddenly became dark and menacing; a silence settled between the four of them. “You really ought not to. You know how much Kankri loathes transphobia.”  
“Well, I still want to know who’s Meenah’s boyfriend” said Meulin, hurtling away all the tension at once.  
John smiled just a little towards Meulin to thank her, and answered “Oooh, I can’t tell anything, I’m afraid” when she saw Meenah’s murderous look. “Just rumors that came to my unworthy ears.”  
They finally arrived to the base after another half hour of waking; Meulin realised they had walked during no less than five hours.  
The first sight of the settlement was a palisade.  
It was not extremely high, no more than two meters over the ground. No, what was truly spectacular was how it continued for what seemed like forever on the left and right, sinking into the depth of the forest on both sides in a straight line. As they approached from the wall, as Meulin’s excitation grew, she realised they were walking towards a small opening – a gate? – in which people were standing, impatiently waiting the slow group. Between them was standing the skeleton guy, perfectly still, his glance directed towards them. When they were 30 yards away from the entrance, one of them began running towards them, looking awfully irritated.  
Meulin knew he was Meenah’s boyfriend.  
She always had a gift in identifying relationships. Maybe it was in her blood, maybe it grew due to the boredom she encountered every day stuck in a small village. With nothing to do all day, she had to invent her own hobbies; shipping people was one of them. As years past her techniques became more elaborate, and she began to see it as an art rather than a distraction.  
When she saw him coming towards her, minuscule changes occurred in Meenah’s body. Her back straightened just a little bit making her breasts more prominent, her eyes widened, the ghost of a smile formed on her lips and her steps were slightly faster.  
The boy running towards them was… small. Extremely small, in fact; Meulin was probably one head taller than him. He stopped in front of Meenah, panting, and began talking – well, screaming would be much more accurate.  
“THEY ATTACKED THE SOLDIERS! The fucking resistance. The army conquered the cities around here, close to OUR fucking base, and my brother drove the soldiers out of here. They didn’t even let us a fucking fight! Every time we have a chance to see some action he just takes it and painfully thrust it back in our bored asses.”  
“Karkat, why are you so upset? They are doing it four our own protection” intervened Kanaya.  
“For our protection? For our protection? We could have driven them the fuck out! We’re prepared and we’re strong, and hey, guess what? It just happens that we haven’t been in a fight for more than two months. It just happens that’s we’re all bored out of our minds. It just happens that the fucking reason why I broke my splendid rectum to assemble you guys and all the others is to fight, yet we can’t fucking fight, simply because the faecal matter of my brother commonly called the “resistance” steals every single one of OUR battles! So they can take back their shitty “protection” and gently insert it in their blood thirsty throats until it peacefully slides down to their stomach and make them so filled-up that they’ll be too heavy to fucking fight our wars.”  
“If you are going to see it in this way, then I am afraid I cannot say anything that will enhance your well-being.” Followed by Porrim, she walked towards the entrance.  
“Did you call ‘im with the radio? The signless?”  
“Of course I did, and don’t call him that. Don’t turn him into a fucking god, because he’s really not. He’s just a random guy that realise that, holy shit mother of fucking asswipes, English was a baddie and needed to be stopped, and everyone call him a genius and give him pathetic names to glorify his amazing insight. No need to be a genius to see that English is an fuckass.”  
“Oh Karkles, is that some jealousy I can here in your voice?”  
“Shut your mouth Terezi!”  
“Poor little frustrated baby. Your brother didn’t let you have fun? He didn’t buy you enough toys? Oh noooooooo! What a monster!” said the girl standing next to Terezi.  
“Vriska! Do you – ”  
“We’ve checked her” said a girl that just appeared behind Karkat. “Meulin Leijon is clear to come in; no reasons to suspect she’s a spy, and her mother helped the resistance several times.”  
“My mom WHAT?” shouted Meulin. “She whaaat?”  
“She helped our cause” said the messenger with a sight. “Can I leave now?”  
“Yeah, glub off” said Meenah with her usual sadistic smile.  
“Paws that mean I can go inside the walls?” she said excitedly.  
“No” cut Karkat. “You’re going to the cities.”  
“Why? He just mewed that I can come in!”  
“Hey, I’m the fucking leader of this whole nonsense, and I say you can’t come in. Someone’s taking you to the train station now and you’re out of this pacific hell. Only fighters are accepted.”  
“Baloney! Of course she has the ability to fight!” held John.  
“Digest her fucking tail and tell me that afterwards!”  
“CAT LITTER!” shouted Meulin. “I can fight. Also, I don’t like you” she added, pointing at Karkat. “Give me some claws, and I will destroy anyone.” She hissed in his direction, and made sure her position was stable enough to support an attack. Karkat looked at her in shock for a few moment, then sighted deeply.  
“Let’s bring her to Jade and Dirk and be done with it.”  
They all followed him inside the gate, where Meulin found… some fields.  
There was just a few trees left after the thick wooden wall in order to give the illusion that the forest continued afterwards, but really there was nothing. Only fields, running for as far as the eye could see on every side. She frowned and realised the forest continued after a distance. Wooden towers separated by 50 yards sprang up in a straight line, camouflaged as trees, a small path running at their feet. They took the path and followed it for more than thirty minutes.  
Every field was different; wheat, green vegetables, fruits, everything that could grow in this climate was here. From time to time they would pass a farm or a warehouse, all camouflaged in trees, where occasionally boys and girls would come out, chattering happily, and Meulin realised her legs were aching quite a lot. Her whole body, in fact. She wondered why, and remembered that she had been beaten up by soldiers a day ago. She groaned and instantly forgot about it.  
The forest finally reappeared, lightened up by the setting sun. Meulin had always loved the night; night brought darkness, and darkness was nothing. No thoughts, no misplaced emotions, no mind out of control. She could just close her tired eyes and feel the darkness fill her, transforming her into a complete void inside.  
Oh, how she loved not having a storm of emotion constantly raging in her stomach.  
Deeper inside the forest, they found a second wall, this one made of stone and slightly circular. Two younger kids were guarding the gates, standing proudly in some kind of salute, their swords vertically upside down with the tip towards the ground and their right fist on their hearts.  
“Yeah, yeah, just open the gates” said a grumpy Karkat.  
Maintaining their perfect discipline, they opened the gates with synchronised movements. It was rather a heavy double-door made of stone, rotating on the ground with the help of small casters.  
They went past the wall and arrived in a whole other world.  
The forest was filled with white structures made of a mix of concrete and stone. Some buildings were flat, other sank into the ground, others were circular, other triangular; although they were all made of the same materials, every single one was different. In the sunless light left by the sky, Meulin could see a series of grey walls and roofs , simple one-floor edifices that seemed to sprout from the ground everywhere.  
What was quite impressive was how it was completely in sync with the forest. Whether the trees were growing over the structures or through them, it seemed like not one had been cut, and their leafs were hiding this proof that humans lived here through a thick cover of green.  
Karkat and the others went inside one of these buildings through a very small metallic door. A sentence was written on it, scratched on the iron: “Warning: the Anime Master and the Wolf will beat the shit out of you.” The door grated infernally, and they all stepped into room dimly lit by torches. That did not surprise Meulin; although the civil war was stabilised, international relationships were scarce and coal and oil, rare in the east of the United States. The electricity was produced mainly through hydraulic energy; it was rarely used outside of the industries.  
“Hey, Strider!” shouted Karkat, “Good news. We’re bringing you a new specimen that you can thoughtfully chew and spit it out as soon as you’ve realised that it’s rotten inside.” Meenah laughed, Meulin hissed.  
A young man, although probably the oldest Meulin had seen yet, entered in the room with a smirk on his face.  
Meulin giggled impulsively.  
“What?”  
“Your… Your sunglasses… They’re so… funny…”  
“Oh. Well that doesn’t make much sense.”  
“They’re so… pointy… and so… sharpurr than claws… manga-like…”  
She calmed down quickly when she saw the reproachful looks that everyone was throwing towards her (although John and Terezi did look quite amused) and smiled.  
“So? Do I have to fight you or something?”  
“Yes, that’s my job” he sighted.  
He turned around and indicated the group to follow him; everyone had left apart from Meenah and Karkat.  
The room was an enormous mess; pieces of metal were laying absolutely everywhere. Meulin took a closer look and realised they were actually shattered robots ripped apart. She took an arm from the floor and stared at the cables slipping out of it.  
“Why all the robots?” she asked.  
“A training program. I build robots, set them into killing mode, and destroy them.”  
“Clawver!”  
“Clawver?”  
“Cat puns” clarified Karkat.  
“I see.”  
“So that’s how efurryone trains? By destroying robots?”  
“Actually… no. Only two of us can beat the shit out of my robots.”  
“Who? Who? Who?”  
“Well, me, for once. What a surprising development. And the second one…” His face was as emotionless as a mask, yet he could not hide the intense pain that settled on it. Meulin could nearly feel it; she knew how the sentence was going to end.  
“And the other one is dead” she continued. “My apawlogies. He was your boyfriend, wasn’t he?” She whispered so that neither Karkat not Meenah could here them.  
“How did you know that? Oh, I see. Facial expression?”  
“Yiss.”  
“Damn. You’re good.”  
“Thanks! Mew I ask, what was his name?”  
Dirk took a deep breath and mumbled “Equius” right before pushing another metallic door.  
Smaller and with fewer lights, the new room was no less of a mess. It was essentially constituted of weapons of all kinds, mot of them were so elaborated that Meulin couldn’t tell how they were used.  
“Oh my god, Dirk, you really should clean this shit up sometimes!” Groaned Karkat.  
“Why? The only ones that have to endure this mess are Jade and myself, and both of us don’t mind it. I have no reasons to come down here and do something that will steal many hours of my life for nothing. Get over it, Karkat. Don’t move.” He dived into the piles and piles of steel, moving swiftly through the columns of razor-sharp blades.  
“Do you purrduce all these weapons?” asked Meulin.  
“No!” Shouted Dirk from deep inside the storage. “A guy called Horuss makes most of them. A lot comes from the resistance.”  
“Where does the iron come furom? I thought it was rare in those times of war…”  
“It is. Signless found a way to form international relationships to have a constant supply. It’s one of the things we can have as much as we want. I’d hope it would be the same with electricity. Do you know how hard it is to make a robot with barely enough power to cook a steak? The steak would be rare as hell. Not that I don’t like it rare. All juicy and bloody… Pretty awesome. What weapon do you want, Meulin?”  
She hesitated a few moments before answering “Two daggers would be furmidable”.  
She heard steel falling down at her left and Dirk slid out of the mountains of weapons, holding two small daggers with an extremely simple design – far from the beautiful shapes of all the other kids’ weapons.  
“There you go. Ok, let’s strife.”  
Meulin quickly analysed her knives; they were not sharp, but the hard metal would suffice to hurt Dirk Strider.  
They went back to the room with the broken robots and from there went to a third room; that one looked like a small arena surrounded by stairs where a potential audience could sit. Meenah and Karkat took place on a step (closer than friends would, definitely inside each other’s personal spaces) and watched the match closely.  
The two participants took place at a few steps from each other, one with daggers and the other with a katana, scrutinizing each other’s eyes.  
Meulin attacked first with a ferocious roar, jumping towards her opponent.  
Dirk didn’t move a bit. He patiently waited for Meulin to fall on him, and slashed his sword at the last moment towards her stomach. She narrowly stopped it with a blow, rolled on the floor, hissed, and attacked again.  
They attacked, defended, smashed, knocked, struck, again and again, yet Meulin didn’t see any weakness or fatigue in his movements. He simply stopped every single one of her attacks and struck her in every possible way and in every parts of her body, trying to find her weak spots. The steel of his katana knocked her body several times, yet it was never strong enough to give her a serious wound.  
She felt the exhaustion slowly growing in her as the fight continued. She was surprised by her lack of energy, but remembered that she barely slept the night before and didn’t eat anything during the entire day. I’m in no condition to fight! She cursed herself for not thinking about it before. Using all the energy she could find in her body, she jumped on him for a final attack. His sword came slashing towards her head; she stopped it with both her daggers… and sank her teeth deep into his hand.  
His mouth twitched as Meulin tasted blood. Still, she did not let go and, instead, kicked him in the guts as strong as she could, pushing him away as if she was trying to rip his hand off. He grunted and seized her throat, forcing her to let go. She shook her head to increase his pain and finally let go of his hand when the air was no longer coming through her throat.  
She fell on her legs and sat on the floor, her head spinning due to the lack of air. She closed her eyes during less than two seconds… and Dirk was gone.  
Grasping for air, she looked around, but he was nowhere to be find. This can’t be good. She stood up, suddenly panicking, and realised she was holding a puppet in her arms.  
A red puppet which was shamelessly exposing his butt in her face.  
“How…”  
The blow came with an explosion of pain.  
Patiently waiting behind her, he had hit her with the extremity of his weapon, right between her shoulder blades. She stumbled on the floor, falling over his puppet, her face distorted by pain.  
“OH FUCKINH JESUS, DIRK,” bellowed Karkat, “HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DID I TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYONE? I ASKED YOU TO FUCKING TEST HER, NOT KILL HER! SHE WAS ALREADY FUCKING COVERED IN SHITSTAINS OF BRUISES!”  
“Oh can you please shut up? You asked me to be the one taking care of training your team, but I guess I don’t get to have any trust coming from you.”  
“Guess what genius, I don’t fucking know why I did that. Giving you this responsibility was one stupid mistake. You are a horrible, abusive brother.”  
A silence fell between the two of them, as heavy as a silence could be. Karkat sighted and closed his eyes.  
“So that’s what it’s all about” said Dirk.  
“Person. I meant, abusive person.”  
“No, you meant abusive brother. I feel like you have issues.”  
“I think you have issues. What does it bring you? Beating everyone up? Do you feel like a king holding this katana?”  
“Karkat. Can we please not?”  
“You’re not a king, Strider. You’re just the guy sitting on a pile of dejections, thinking that what he shits every day contributes to raise him towards the sky. You’re just the guy thinking that he’s over everyone else, but in the end, you’re just an idiot with a throne made of crap. How does that make you feel.”  
Dirk’s face stayed expressionless, and only his right eyebrow rose. “You get quite poetic when you’re all sentimental.”  
“I swear, I will fucking…”  
“It’s not going to work. Screaming at me is not going to bring Dave back to life.”  
Strider walked out of the room without even glancing at the other one.  
“You… you do realise I am fine?”  
Meulin was standing up, smiling. “That blow wasn’t this hard, and I’m quite strong. I’ll be fine.” She took a step, trying to ignore the agony spreading in her back. “I’ll be fiiiiine” she said once again, trying to convince herself more than Karkat.  
“Yeah, you’ll be.” He seemed extenuated by the fight he just had, calm for the very first time since she met him. “You’re accepted here. You’re a real fucking warrior. Bravo. Confetti and all that bullshit.”  
The young teenage girl screamed out of happiness.

“Meulin? Are you sure you are all right?”  
Meulin violently shook her head, pulling herself out of her thoughts and back on earth. It was so easy to escape in the palace of her mind, especially when she was tired and hurt. But she would not show weakness, not in front of the resistance, not now that she was a part of it.  
“Yes! My back doesn’t hurt anyroar. I’m fine.”  
Aranea Serket looked at the other girl with a concerned glance. She was as pretty as Vriska – good looks seemed to be a thing in the Serket family – but definitely less creepy. Karkat had asked her to show Meulin the base, to which she had agreed excitedly.  
“So. What were you saying?” Meulin smiled and tried to stand straight.  
“The base, which has been named ‘Alternia’, is in a circular shape and is constituted of four major rings. You crossed the first one when you entered in here; it’s the whole space with fields and farms. That is the fourth ring, the biggest one. Here, we grow our own food, raise our own meat. The resistance help us on many things; cleaning products, fabrics – you may have noticed that all our clothes are exceptionally colourful? Kanaya makes all of them, and she won’t allow anyone to wear what she calls ‘Colours that make you want to yawn and sleep into eternal dullness’. She makes an exception for Karkat who insists on wearing a black outfit at all times.  
“So, I was saying, although the resistance helps us with many products, Karkat insists on Alternia being independent with food. He is extremely affected by the independence of the base. He has conflicted emotions with his big brother; living in the shadows of someone for his whole childhood gave him the strongest determination. Unfortunately, it seems like the Signless is not ready to let him go. He destroys the army every time it comes near Alternia, give us everything we need even if it means the actual resistance will have shortages. He does not see our movement as a powerful branch of his army, but as a playground for the sons, daughters, brothers of the ones who are part of the resistance. He is afraid that the children get hurt in an adult fight, so he places them all in deserted cities, deep into the west of our country, where the fight will never touch them. These cities are ruled by children, as the resistance needs all the adults it can get; in them we have developed our own culture, that you will find in Alternia. As you may have understood, the Signless is a great, generous, strong and determined man, but he is also overprotective, and Karkat hates him for that.”  
“Oh my god yes! He seems to have more relationships purroblems than this. He had a fight with Dirk earlier, I didn’t understood efurrything… They were mewing about someone called… David?”  
“Dave” corrected Aranea. “Yes, there is rumours going through the base that Dirk’s little brother was once Karkat’s boyfriend. I would not know for sure, he does not wish to talk about his personal life.”  
“Looks like this kid has a lot of issues” sighed Meenah, who completely forgot to hate him.  
“Anyways. We are now in the third circle; the training centre.” They were walking on a running track that was following the stone wall between the fields and the training underground rooms; the night was now completely dark, and a glowing torch lighted up the way here and there. The wall, that actually formed a circle on a larger scale, was concentric to the other walls that separated the fourth, third, second and main circle, each area smaller and smaller as they walked towards the centre of Alternia. Walking along the wall, Meulin had the strange impression to be in a never-ending turn, as if they were going round and round and round without realizing that they went through that same spot thousands of times.  
But they weren’t. Meulin first saw the orange lights that the complex was spreading all around; it was an outdoor training center. She gasped in admiration in front of what was there; it seemed like an entire forest… of rotating dummies. They were as tall as an average person, with wooden sticks attached to one side and a shield to the other. There was maybe thrity, fourty of them, close enough for someone to feel surrounded – and probably quite overwhelmed – yet far enough so that the trainee had the space enough to move in between them.  
“Oh my god” whispered Meulin.  
“Impressive, isn’t it? Dave and our engineer, Horuss, made this training system; one has to turn a wheel and all the dummies rotate at once. Then, another pupil goes inside the dummy maze and has to stop the blows coming towards him. This is extremely popular, many of us like to use it to practice our defence skills.  
“Oh my goooooooood! I want to try it!... Hmm, purrhaps later” she added when her wounded body sent a silent warning to her brain.  
“You will have a lot of times to train. I am afraid that not much is happening around here, apart from roleplaying and training. It quickly becomes dull. The civil war is stabilised, and there is basically no on-going action.”  
They continued their wandering silently. Meulin marvelled at the shooting targets disposed in straight lines.  
“You should see the rest of the underground complex” added Aranea with an excited tone. “It is immense. There is a bodybuilding part, an entire room with punching balls where you can learn to fight with no weapons… There is also a room covered in foam; this room is used for the particularly violent fights where the participants do not want to die during the combat. Terezi Pyrope and my little sister, Vriska Serket, use this room… extensively. They have a tumultuous relationship, yet it seems to suit them.”  
“Relationships! Now we’re mewing!”  
“Actually, we are not, I am afraid” she said with a certain discomfort. “I am not a very good gossiper.”  
“It is an art that I can teach you” answered Meulin with a wink. “Do you heroar the noise?”  
“Yes” answered the other one with a smile. “I think it is Gamzee and Tavros training again. They are the youngest of our community.”  
They fell on two kids, no older than eleven or twelve years old, riding mini karts. One of them, the one wearing a Mohawk, was holding a spear and looking at his opponent with challenge. The other one was… was probably high? Meulin felt suddenly sad, seeing a kid that was already into drugs although he wasn’t even out of childhood. He was looking at the other one with a dull smile; his eyes were nearly entirely closed, his pupils dilated. He was holding a club in his left hand; both of them were entirely covered with blue foam armours.  
They were both waiting at each end of a concrete platform, their engines groaning.  
“Are you ready, motherfucker?” he said with a slightly trembling voice.  
“Let’s do that!”  
They both pressed on the acceleration pedal at the exact same time; for a second Meulin thought they were going to collide, but their karts brushed past… And Gamzee slammed his club towards Tavros’ chest, ejecting him out of his vehicle. Tavros fell on the ground and laughed softly.  
“You had me! You’re, uh, you’re becoming pretty good, at this I mean, yeah,”  
“Well that’s because I have the best motherfucking teacher in this world, brother!” answered Gamzee before picking him up the ground. That would make a purrfect ship, thought Meulin. She realised that Tavros couldn’t use his legs; they were floating under his waist, useless as Gamzee was carrying him.  
“Oh hi, Aranea” said Tavros with a smile. “And who’s, uh, the girl with you?”  
“She’s new! Her name is Meulin Leijon!”  
“Welcome, motherfucker” croaked the fucked up kid.  
“Yeah, hi! Uh, and, also, welcome.”  
“Thanks!”  
They continued along the running track that seemed to go all around the whole training area. Eventually, they arrived to a new gate, leading into the second part of Alternia.  
“You will notice the wall separating the second and third part is thicker than the two outer walls. The more you go into the city, the thicker the walls. In the possibility of an attack, all the population – we are around a hundred individuals – will go deeper inside the city as the invasion progress. This campsite is one of the more secure you could find, the Signless wouldn’t have it any other way.  
“There are observations towers all over the forest, outside the base, hidden in the trees. We invented a great warning system; when an intruder enters in our forest, the one who saw him writes his observations on a small piece of paper that he attaches to an arrow. This arrow will be sent from tower to tower, until it finally arrives to the headquarters where Karkat decides what the appropriate reaction would be. What a person travels in an hour, an arrow does it in two minutes or less, allowing us to prepare ourselves way before the attack.”  
“Pawesome!” said Meulin as they entered into the second circle. Aranea pointed out a structure that was on the left; it was barely visible, vaguely lightened up by the torches that were placed on the top of the wall. She screwed her eyes, and realised she was looking at a boat. A real-sized boat, with real-sized sails and a spider-shaped bow.  
“Wooooooooow” cheered Meulin as her jaw dropped. “Omg omg ok that’s furtastic.”  
“Indeed, it is!”  
“Why are there trees going through it?”  
“We try not to cut any trees, we prefer building around them. They grow through our houses, through the buildings. They provide us with a cover; we do not want Lord English’s air force to detect our presence. Though I must admit, he hates air force as it is too “tactical” (he prefers heavy infantry, that he sends crashing against the enemy lines), and the resistance destroys every plane he sends over the Free Land; there is no real danger of him discovering the position of our base. Still, we cannot be too careful, can we?” She smiled and added “Massive roleplaying is an important hobby here. This boat is used essentially by Vriska and Meenah; over there, we have to very small bases made of wood, where two teams can prepare a war and fight with fake weapons. And, right to your left, is Terezi’s tribunal, where Vriska was judged more times than a human brain can count.”  
“So here efurryone just builds whatefur they want, and roleplay with it?”  
“Precisely! Roleplaying is extremely intense here. Back in the cities, it was the only activity we had; we took this pastime with us, here. The second circle is essentially used for roleplaying and relaxing. Oh, and here is our common room!”  
She pointed out a tall, rectangular house entirely made of wood. Aranea pushed the thick oak door, and a rush of warmness blew over Meulin’s face.  
The “common room” was, indeed, one big, colourful room. Coloured fabric and coloured carpets covered the walls, the ground and even the ceiling, and piles were spread out all over the cosy place. A corner was entirely filled with an enormous pile of pillows; there was also a pile of horns standing in the middle, a pile of plush dragons dolls, a pile of those disgusting porn puppets Dirk had tricked her with earlier, a pile of squiddles. In the back, a huge fireplace shred light on the whole room, and a few people were sitting comfortably in couches all around it. Meulin also noticed a few table footballs, chess tables and pool tables.  
“The catmosphere is so… warm and sweet and great!” she shouted, smiling.  
“Yes, it is! It is a very nice place to relax after a day of Dirk’s severe teaching. Back there, you will find a ladder that will bring you to the first floor where you will find a library. The books we have here…”  
“Dinner fucking time!”  
Both girls jumped and gasped out of fright. It was him, again; Kurloz Makara. Aranea calmed down and threw him a mean look.  
“Could you please not do this?”  
“No. Aranea, I am the bearer of a missive from Porrim. Go and mother fucking see her.”  
“What?”  
“I do believe she is in urgent need of an embrace. Or perchance, something more… fiery.”  
Aranea’s face grew pale and she muffled with a tiny voice “We’re not… stop… don’t… no it’s not true…”  
“I shall take the responsibility of showing our exquisite newcomer to the eating room while you go and take care of this lovely fucking business.”  
She escaped from Kurloz’s gaze by precipitately walking out of the room. He turned towards Meulin with a smile.  
“Hello, dear. Excuse this small intervention, but one must take care of his motherfucking ships, doesn’t he?”  
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god! Are you a matchmaker?”  
“I would not qualify myself with this honorific title, but I have, as some would call it, the fucking stuff. This,” he added while looking at the door through which Aranea left with a certain melancholy, “is most definitely not my favourite pairing.”  
“Really? Why? Which is your fafurite pairing? What couples are there here? How many ships do you have? Can I be a matchmaker with you? You’re sooo pawsome by the way I love the feeline of you, and you smell sooooooooo good! Oh my god did I just mew too much?”  
Kurloz began to laugh. It sounded a lot like a series of very amused hiccoughs, interrupted by “honks” from time to time. Meulin had a distinctive sensation of melting inside.  
“I am delighted that we share the same occupations! Let us walk towards dinner while I communicate every single potential and already existent couples there is here to you, o fucking charming person.”  
“Hahaha! Flirty flirty!”  
“Please! You do understand that half the population of this base is already fantasizing about you?”  
Meulin raised an eyebrow. “What is the ofur half doing?”  
“The ofur half is either straight girls or gay men.”  
“And what are youuuu?”  
“I am mother fucking water. I adapt myself to whatever… recipient I encounter, and gladly fill it with my juice.”  
“Omg you’re so so so gross!” She laughed and rubbed her head against his arm, as a soft purr escaped from her throat.  
“What a peculiar display of fucking affection.”  
“So, what’s your fafurite ship?”  
They began walking out of the house, following a trail of lights.  
“Well, there is one that I foresaw long before it actually happened. Did you meet them? Terezi and Vriska.”  
“Oh my god! Yeessss! They’re in a relationship? I thought they were like cats and dogs, purrty opposites.”  
“Actually, we have here what is commonly called “black romance”, also named “kismesissitude”. It is…”  
“A relationship that goes through hatred?”  
“Precisely! You’re mother fucking good, lady.”  
“It wasn’t a hard one. But you’re right, I am quite clawver in terms of ships.”  
“Quit dazzling me with your modesty, my eyes are melting like a mother fucking terribly saddened icecube!”  
Meulin hissed and punched him in the arm, before bursting out of laughter with him. They arrived in front of a building that looked exactly like the common room, only entirely made of stone.  
“There is our mirthful fucking destination: the dining hall. Will you gladly accept to dine in my company, or shall I fall on my knees and beg you?”  
“Hmmm… I would adroar to see you begging, but I want to hear more about this black romance!” She could have sworn she spotted jubilation in his spine-chilling eyes.  
Holding his arm, they entered into the building that also was one single room. Five long tables were placed perpendicularly in the same direction than the rectangle formed by the room; the light released by the torches hit against the stone walls and created a medieval-like atmosphere. The teenagers sitting along the wooden tables were chatting, laughing, screaming, running between tables, creating a hubbub that ran into Meulin’s ear like an exciting melody.  
“KURLOOOOOOTHTHEFHTH!!!!”  
A boy ran across the whole room towards the two of them; his hair were falling right over his eyes, and they seemed to obstruct them as he tripped over basically everything; the chairs, people that came in his way, his own feet. As far as she could see, he seemed to have no control over his body.  
He fell into Kurloz’s arms, hugging him as strong as he could (Meulin saw that at the gush of pain that went through Kurloz’s face when his friend grabbed him), smiling as much as a human face physically could.  
“Mituna!” answered Kurloz with a sweetness in his voice, that could have made Meulin jealous if she wasn’t already having SO MANY F33333333LS about the two of them.  
Mituna finally let go of him and began letting out an incomprehensible gibberish; it seemed like he was constantly stumbling on his own tongue. “THWEAT TEHF KATTLBYBIOTHF FUCTHK TEHTH FUCK HARE HIELDONG YTHUR ARTHM NOO I DATHN LYSTHK THUT!!”  
“Calm down! You do know I cannot understand this atypical language of yours when you are in this state of mother fucking agitation.” He rubbed Mituna’s messy red hair in a fraternal gesture.  
“THYE HANSH HOTHHH MSNAY ORFITHEZ PETHETRANATE SHTHAM AJLL BTEHANTH A BUTHSH FUGK THER DZRY ANTH BZY MEHETH A ITHCRAAAAAM!!!!”  
Kurloz took a long, deep breath, snapped his fingers and, with a deep, soothing voice, said the single word “sleep.” Mituna’s broken voice suddenly stopped as his head dropped, although his body stayed straight.  
“Did I forget to mention? I am also a hypnotist” he said with pride.  
“Oh, my, god.”  
He quickly placed his left hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Deeper deeper deeper deeper and the deeper you go and the better you feel and the better you fell and the deeper you go, aaaaaall the way down. Good. Now look at me.”  
Mituna’s head raised, and his eyes looked up at Kurloz’s with a stare of submission mixed with fascination and attentiveness. He was standing perfectly still, finally gaining the control over his own body.  
“Excellent! You’re doing great, you are the best person I ever hypnotised, you are the best friend I could ever wish to have. Now, I want you to repeat exactly what you just told me, from the moment where I entered in this room until now. When I will snap my fingers you will remember every word you just say and you will repeat it in a clear and intelligible way.” He snapped his fingers once again.  
“Kurloz! That the kittybitch fuck the fuck her holding your arm noo I don’t like that! She has so many orifices penetrate them all behind a bush fuck her dry and buy be an ice cream.” He smiled peacefully, as if he just said hello to his neighbour on a bright Sunday morning of August with nothing in his life that could possibly go wrong. His voice was strangely calm and emotionless, although he had a very strong lisp that made the whole thing frankly cute. Meulin was observing the scene, feeling terrorised and fascinated at the same time. She didn’t even remember to feel hurt by Mituna’s words.  
“Oh mother fucking Messiahs, Mituna, those obscenities were quite over our mutual limits, especially with a lady standing right beside me!”  
“I’m sorry” answered the other one, looking suddenly very ashamed. “Hey, Kurloz?”  
“Yes, mother fucker?”  
“Fuck you” claimed Mituna while brandishing his middle finger with a smile.  
They both chuckled and Kurloz snapped his fingers; “Wake up, wake up now.”  
The three of them walked towards a small space on one of the benches when Meulin saw the green and brown banner hanged up at the extremity of the room: We remember the colour of the earth.  
“What is that?”  
“Did you ever step in a town destroyed by our treacherous army?”  
“I did. It’s a catastrophe…”  
“Burnt to the mother fucking ground, like a greasy fog in the soul of a killer. The earth bartered its colour for a dull grey all over our nation. We remember its colour; we remember those who died for it. We remember how it was before.” Although he smiled she realised how tired his eyes seemed.  
The three of them went to sit at the closest places. Meulin felt the looks of a hundred teenagers on her back, and she felt the urge to say a bright hello to them all… and that was precisely what she did, waving her hand with a grin on her face towards all the others. They answered quite positively, shouting Hellos and Welcomes and waving with smiles on (nearly) all of their faces.  
A smaller (how was that even possible) version of Karkat wearing a red sweater that Meulin was quite convinced came from his grandma pushed his chair away from the table and came towards Meulin.  
“Sit” he said with a voice that was supposed to be deep and aggressive but that sounded more like an angry Chihuahua.  
Meulin reluctantly obeyed.  
“I will now lec- uh dialogue with you on diverse matters. Trigger warnings contain but may not be restricted to; relationships, romantic relationships, sexual relationships, beneficial relationships, polyamory, asexuality, asexual relationships, aromantics, infidelity, break ups, loss of someone we hold dear. Do any of these terms trigger you?”  
“… no…?”  
“Very well, since you arrived in an unknown place I guess you don’t have any moirail or, as you may know them, “best friends” to calm you down in case I enter in a triggering area. If I do, please do not hesitate to stop my speech… I mean, our discussion so that we can work out what is causing a problem, and why. I apologise for the use of the word “moirail”; like any of us I do want you to have a positive integration as one of us, as a small part of our large group or, as some may call it, a fraternity – but be careful with this highly triggering word, it may offend some of us identifying to the feminine sex and make them feel rejected, as “fraternity” defines us as a masculine group, which we are not – and I did not wish to offend you by using a term that you don’t yet know, thus making you feel apart from our world and unable to understand our vocabulary. Please accept my most sincere apologies.”  
“It’s… it’s fine, I guess?”  
“ That being said, I will now elaborate on the different types of relationships that I have stated above. I will now start with the most common types – careful again with this, do not forget that they are only the most common and in no way better or worse than any types of relationships. Be aware of your privilege to be in relationships that are traditionally accepted in our societies, while others may feel disregarded and even criticized. These “common relationship” involve all genders; they classically divide in three different types, romantic relationships, beneficial relationships and sexual relationships. Romantic relationships appear when two individuals feel a certain romantic attraction; that means they could be attracted by the intelligence, perspicacity, way of living, cultural knowledge, hobbies, mentality, opinions etc.; they are attracted by the other’s personality for various reasons. Romantic relationships do or don’t involve sex – while it was long believed romantic and sexual attraction were both entangled and thus two parts of Attraction – with a capital A – we now know that they are two entirely different attractions and they do not need to be conditional, and by this I mean, that they can exist without the other. That means that romantic relationships have nothing to do with sex - keep in mind that this fact is only true since recently. Romantic relationship mostly – but not always – have a very strong sense of infidelity, both parties being extremely sensible about it; by engaging in a relationship both agree to be faithful to the other, that means, not having any sexual intercourse or romantic attraction to anyone else. Of course, the terms of the contract change in every couple, and we must not forget that some couples agree to sexual intercourses or even a romantic attraction to some degree to other individuals. Infidelity simply means not respecting the contract the two individuals set in the beginning of their relationship. Although this contract may not be written nor clearly stated, both know very well what it is constituted of and where are its limits (this is, again, in most relationships, there may be some confusions in some couples.) This contract must not only be respected by both parties, but also by the relatives, friends, co-workers or any people they live with daily, and by this I mean that the people that are aware of this contract must not try to break it, aka they must not try to flirt or try to initiate any kind of relationship that is not strictly platonic (and by saying “platonic”, I am speaking both sexually and romantically) with one of them. The ones who initiate in those treacherous acts often know what they are gambling with, which is the strong bond between the two parts of the couple, and they deserve nothing else than hatred and remonstrance for their acts. Sexual relationships, where both individuals consider each other as “sex friends”, generally do not include faithfulness; both…”  
“Turtleman!” Kurloz boomed with a terrifying voice. “You will stop this maddening babbling and get to the mother fucking point.”  
Kankri turned back towards Meulin; “Cronus and I, we are a couple, romantically and sexually attracted to each other. Don’t try to break our couple. Don’t flirt at him like you did earlier. Don’t. Do. It. Again.”  
She took a few seconds to acknowledge the situation. When she finally understood what was going on, she raised an eyebrow and said “oh yiss, I totally flirted with him. You see, his leather pants and his unlit cigarette appealed me more than I could bear. Omg, get a grip, go sharpen your claws on anofur prey! You two are cute, not my OTP but whatefur, but you know his leather pants are too small fur him. I can see it deep in your eyes.”  
“I will ask you to stop making fun of his leather pants. There are circum…”  
“My purroint is, there was no flirting going on earlier. None at all.”  
“The evidence is against you.”  
“Evidence? Who said evidence?”  
“HAAAAAAAY THEZERIII!”  
“Hi Mituna! What were you talking about?”  
“Kankri was telling me that…”  
“ETHZRIZI WHERE ITH LATULA?”  
Everyone stopped talking at once; Kurloz’s smile completely disappeared, Kankri looked around, wondering what he should do now in a slightly panicked manner, Meulin held her breath, not understanding why it was all so tense. The only one who kept her calm was Terezi, although the fist clenched behind her back.  
“She’s coming back, soon. She found a nice road where she can skate and go faster than if she walks through the woods.”  
Mituna looked miserable. “I mishth her.” He began playing with his fingers.  
“I… I know you do.”  
“Hey, Mituna” said Kurloz, breaking the silence. “She told me she bought you a new skateboard.”  
Mituna’s face broke into a cry of joy and he shook of excitement. Everyone went back to their seats, pleased to have escaped from the drama that could have well happened.  
A look in Kurloz’s eyes indicated to Meulin that Latula was, in fact, dead.  
They took a seat between Mituna, a tall girl that quickly presented herself as Jade (Meulin had the impression that everything in her was shining; her hair, her brown skin, her voice, her green eyes, her smile) and a guy with a mask that vaguely resembled to a penis that looked like all the misery of the world had fallen on him.  
“You should smile” she whispered.  
The boy looked at her with puzzlement. “Sorry?”  
“You should smile! If you smile, you will instantly dig out all the pawsitive emotions hiding in the back of your brains. Come on!”  
He threw her a crooked smile as she shook her head in approval. Meulin quickly forgot Horuss; she did not even ask his name.  
As they ate a delicious dinner – potatoes and carrots and small pieces of chicken – Kurloz, using his usual eloquent speech, exposed all the details, all the positive and negative points, all the risks of all four romances that had been invented by the bored kids in the cities. Meulin listened avidly without thinking about the food that was turning cold in her plate.  
“Kurloz here” said Jade agitating her fork in his direction, “is our specialist in blackrom.”  
“Really? Why do you play with only one type of romance when you have fur to juggle with? I always thought one was not enough!”  
“Yes, the Wolf Lady is right. Black is such an exquisite colour, and mother fucking hatred is the clearest of emotions. If I shall speak truly, I would say that I seem to be… colour blind to other emotions. To my greatest despair, I do not seem to see the feeling of love on one’s face. It is just a concept that is so far to me it could be in the Pucking Knight’s rectum.”  
Jade spilled out all the water she was drinking on Mituna and puffed in a corner. “That was so funny!”  
“Dear girl, I thank you. Kitty madam, why art thou so desolated?”  
“Well, you can’t even see pawsitive emotions? You can’t see happurrness and amusement and joy and love?”  
“Scarcely.”  
A savage smile appeared on Meulin’s lips. “You’re just a dramatic kitten! Look at you, being all furvent in furont of darkness and negative emotions!”  
“Oh dear…”  
“Drama drama dramaaaaa!”  
“This is strangely entertaining.”  
“Do you wurnt me to make a little diagram? Smile means happy. Big smile means furry happy.”  
“Only if you allow me to draw you a diagram in return.”  
“Deal! What will the diagram be?”  
“You shall discover this soon enough.”  
“I want to know now!”  
Kurloz chuckled and winked. “Once you are done with your meal I will bring you to your house. You will see, it is the most uncomfortable place you have ever stayed. You will curse it within two hours.”  
“I beth one!”  
“The fearless rider raises the bets!”  
The young boy with the skeleton outfit licked his thin lips and hopped on the table in a surprisingly swift jump for a boy of his height. “Pray, friends! Bets are now opened!”  
“What bets?”  
“I bet three thousand!”  
“Four hundred and thirteen!”  
“Six hundred and sixty six!”  
“I think we shouldn’t throw bets in such a mannerless way. What if he”  
“Kankri, shut up.”  
“Three!”  
“Four tomatoes and a banana.”  
“And the bets are closed!” thundered Kurloz, using his deep and imposing voice to set a complete silence through the whole room. “You are all wrong. Wrong! Dear fools! Oh messiahs, prevent me from falling in their ignorance. The killer was my puppet!” he pointed towards the kid that was karting earlier – what was his name? Gamzee? – who looked towards the ground as fingers pointed towards him and shouts began to ran in his direction.  
“Why is it always motherfucking me?” he whined as everyone was boo-ing him. “Bro, I don’t want to be…”  
But it was too late for the miserable kid, Kurloz’s fingers had already snapped and the fatal word, pronounced. “Sleep.” The kid had the same reaction as Mituna, his head falling on the side. “Great. You are doing great, brother. Please, come and join me on the table.” Gamzee Makara pushed himself up the dining table and stood patiently next to his brother.  
“Very well… Who will be your next victim?” Kurloz walked along the table, throwing sceptical looks all around him, his feet softly brushing the wood soundlessly. “Who… shall… be… you.” He stopped in front of a boy with strong shoulders and a bright green bowtie that feigned a confident look.  
“Boy! What is this tomfoolery? A man of your gown will fall down quicker than my dead grandma – god bless her – the day of her death. Prepare, cowboy!”  
“Gamzee?” susurrated his brother as his hand crept out on Gamzee’s shoulder. “You know what to do, don’t you?” and he added, in a voice that was close from the hissing of a snake, “Attack.”  
Gamzee screamed and fell on the teenager, who changed his expression to a surprised one – and, this time, it was not feigned. They fell on the ground together, and Muelin heard a loud thump when the metal of his gun met Gamzee’s jaw.  
“Stop that. Just fucking stop that. I’m getting tired of your creepy shows. I don’t know why everyone loves them so much. Maybe everyone’s mind is just twisted enough to enjoy seeing your little brother being manipulated and mocked every two nights. So now just get your shit back in place, let your brother go and let’s end this night. Now.” Karkat was standing up, ridiculously small next to the giant Kurloz was.  
Kurloz smiled provokingly and bowed very low.  
“Very well, Oh knight, I will obey your every command. I do not wish ill of my little brother. Ô brother, when I snap my fingers you will mother fucking wake up.”  
He snapped, turned around and bounced back to the ground, right in front of Meulin.  
“My lady, let me bring you to your royal quarters.”  
“What was all that about? That… didn’t make any sense!” She babbled once they were outside, in the cold of the night.  
He turned towards her, tall, protective, smiling handsomely. She suddenly realised how afraid she was, how terribly, mind-blowingly afraid she felt. She shook and stared at the ground, unable to look at the Tim Burton character standing in front of her, beginning to realise that she was lost in the middle of the forest with only a couple of mad children who crept the cat litter out of her. Realising that she just saw a couple of children kill some soldiers, beat the crap out of her (the ache was still here, spread out through her back), and hypnotise the younger one to attack another one of them.  
“Mad” she repeated under her breath.  
“This would be the appropriate word to portray the whole lot of us” he agreed. “And I believe you will fit here. Like a motherfucking glove.”  
His smile comforted her, acting like a balm on her sore back. She chuckled softly, rubbing her left arm with anguish. “Will I?”  
“Of course you will!” He cheered. “I give you my honourable fucking word. When each of us set foot in this motherfucking dark carnival, Oh sister, we were all whingeing and crying as if the Apocalypse had finally exhibited her foul, distorted naked body on this mother fucking planet. When you came to our little world, you were smiling. Oh dear, what a lovely sight you gave to this fucking community! They have all been gossiping about you, blabbering on why you were not on your knees imploring the Gods to bring you home. You are mother fucking brave, friend. You should be proud of your accomplishments, and forgive your mother fucking self for this small outburst of panic that just fled through your eyes.”  
Kurloz pointed towards his left, and they began walking on the dark grass, lightened up by the many torches on their way.  
“What is more, thanks to the Mirthful Messiahs, your mother is well alive and part of the resistance.”  
“OMG I completely furgot about that!” She laughed in an eruption of joy and relief. “Could I speak to hurr?”  
“Of course! We acquired a radio to communicate with the whole resistance all over the country.”  
“Pawsooooooooome!” She inhaled a large gulp of air, feeling her members relaxing one by one, feeling the oxygen flying through her veins as her body was calming itself down.  
“I’m not brave, noble sirrcat” she admitted. “I furget. I furget my situation, I furget I am supposed to be afuraid. I am overwhelmed by excitement and all my other emeowtions are suffocated.”  
“Whatever it takes” he retorted. “What you really need to comprehend here, is that nothing makes any mother fucking sense. None of us make sense. What we do, why we are here? Pray, do not even get me started on this subject. We are lost kids, kitty, we are lost killers. Mad, useless warriors. But what more should we fucking expect? Set some kids with grief in their hearts loose, and that will turn out,” he confessed, his hands waving at the diverse wooden installations built around them, probably used in roleplaying. “We live on the hope of revenge. All of us experienced a loss, a tragic death of our kin. We want to avenge them, but how? We haven’t had an attack in months and months. Whenever the army attacks, whenever we could fight them back, the resistance saves us of this perilous danger. We end up wedged in this place, doing nothing of our miserable lives than aimlessly training and roleplaying. That would turn any man mother fucking wild.  
“That is why you would fit, blue tail. You seem as demented as the rest of us. Pardon my enthusiasm as well as my perhaps inappropriate language, but… You do not make any sense.”  
Meulin walked silently, secretly admiring the touch of folly that arose in his eyes when he talked so passionately. She suddenly grasped what he just said, and punched him hard in the shoulder.  
“Hey! I make sense!”  
“Of course you do” he laughed. “The tail is really mother fucking convincing me here.”  
“Why is efurryone mentioning the tail?” she snapped.  
“I think efurryone admire it. It shows that you are one of us.”  
“Well, you’re one to mew when you’re dressed like a skeleton! Also, you talk like a Purrince, and suddenly you slip a word that fucks the whole sentence up.”  
“Actually, this comes from my religion” he claimed. But right at this moment they stepped into the centre of the city-like base, and Meulin had to stop and admire, speechless, the small habitations that spread out in front of her eyes.  
They were all made out of wood, small huts built on one another as if the builders tried to fit as much as possible in one small space. They were mixed up with the nature surrounding them, trees growing through them and all around them, leaves recovering the roofs and crackling on the ground. Moss was decorating the outer walls and flowers were growing in front of every door. It was a real city in the woods, resembling to the ones Meulin had dreamt of when she rambled back in her village, starring at the forest, dreaming of adventures and cats.  
“Oh my god, that is cute as Hell” she whispered under her breath.  
Kurloz took her chin between his long and skeletal fingers, raising her head towards the sky. “Look up the trees, Bastet.”  
Meulin looked up, guessing what was up there even before she could see anything. It was another city, pitched up in the trees, wooden bridges linking the houses attached to the trees. “They build those magnificent inner walls with the thoughtful idea we would not exceed the 30 inhabitants” explained Kurloz with an amused tone, “We turned out to be around a mother fucking hundred, so our dear leader decided to build up to the sky. And now our little city looks like it is right out of Neverland.”  
“It’s wonderfur.”  
“It’s a miracle.” He began walking promptly straight ahead, hands in the pockets of his short, an absent smile decorating his painted face. Meulin shivered as the cold slid through the opening of her jacket.  
“What religion do you follow?” she wondered, running to follow Kurloz’s quick pace.  
“It is ancient and lacks a mother fucking name. Those who preach it are rare and insignificant to this world, but we know its words to be the Ultimate Truth. Its mighty fucking books proclaim two mirthful messiahs will appear on a planet that do not yet exist. Up the ladder, dear.”  
“We’re going up there? Yaaaaaay!” She grabbed the tree, took a deep breath and began climbing it, her hands and feet scratching against the trunk, slipping and pushing her up and up. She could feel her muscles stretch and pull, her breathing accelerating; she imagined the ground disappearing into darkness under her as the stars welcomed her with opened arms.  
She was remembering how great climbing felt.  
Hoisting herself up the last branch, she took another long breath, the smell of the pines filling her lungs, again and again. Kurloz came up giggling.  
“You did realise there was a mother fucking ladder going up the tree, did you?”  
“… Well this was… empurrasing.”  
“Indeed, dear friend.”  
“Hush, Purrloz, huuuuuuuuush. Nobody needs to know.”  
“Nobody will. This way.” He walked along a footbridge that dangerously creaked when he passed the middle. They crossed a few closed houses, walked on many more bridges, all looking more unreliable than the previous one.  
“That will be your home sweet home.”  
It was a small house, just one room with a bed in the corner and a shelf on the left side. The wood was blackened where the torch was burning, the fire protected by a small globe made of glass and thus not burning the precious little village. The tree on which it was built passed right through the middle, and the whole thing was gently pushed by the wind.  
Although it was small and cold and empty and, let’s be frank, threateningly unstable as it was five meters over the ground, Meulin fell in love with it; it was so new. She was already thinking of how well she was going to decorate it and how cosy and warm it was going to be and how all her friends were going to want and sleep in her amazing room because holy mother of god, it was going to be beautiful. She turned towards Kurloz and hugged him.  
“I love it.” Her eyes were filled up with emotion.  
“Please, do not cry of joy. Tears are typically reserved to sadness, it confuses me greatly when they are expressed through a fairly positive emotion.”  
“I wurrill do mrry burrest” she cried as she rubbed her eyes, feeling the purrs rolling off her tongue uncontrolled.  
They sat on the platform right in front of her new home, hanging at a fence, starring at the forest and at the city in the woods and at the sky.  
“Why do you look so sad?” she threw him a compassionate look.  
“I… sorry, what?”  
“Your eyes are weeping inside and your paws are shaking a little. I know the signs.”  
Kurloz disturbingly glared at her for a while, before smiling and rubbing the planks on which he was sitting. “The person who built this magnificent yet unsteady city in the trees was my… partner. Boyfriend? Black relationship… person. Guy. Companion. My black companion. Mother fucking yeah.”  
“Is he…”  
“Dead.” He shook his head in approval. “He got sick, and we did not have the intelligence of bringing him to the hospital in time.”  
“Omg this is catinating! Sorry” she added, covering her mouth of her hands as she blushed of shame. “That was rude.”  
“That was just fine” laughed Kurloz.  
“What was he like?”  
“Rufioh? A true asshole. Every one of our friends strongly believed he was a gentleman, when really he despised all of them inside. I helped him get all this hatred out of this treacherous heart of his. Our relationship was… turbulent” he remembered with the glimpse of good times in his eyes. “We would constantly cheat on each other in a desperate attempt to offend the other, but eventually we realised neither of us cared. And that night we had the greatest motherfucking sex of all times.”  
Meulin burst out of laughter, her entire body shaking convulsively, and she had to hold on to the fence in order not to fall over. “Purrloz, I ship the two of you so, so, so hard. Fur real. Omg!”  
“I am pleased you share this ship. Many thought we were incompatible. The noises we made at night begged to differ.”  
“Why are you so into rage?”  
“I think my religion did have a great influence in this domain. It teaches us how to mother fucking accept it. What are we without wrath?”  
“We are as dull as sleeping lions.”  
“Sleeping lions are not dull. They can move, they can shake. They could scream in their sleep when a dark dream raises in their head.”  
“They are dull! Did you efur see a sleeping lion? The fearful creature is nothing more than a plush toy.”  
“A very big and very alive plush toy.”  
“Plush plush plush pluuuuuuuuush! But you digress.”  
“Indeed. The Mirthful Messiahs will come in a planet that does not yet exist. They teach us that mother fucking hatred must be an emotion unhidden. When it is enclosed in the depths of us, it becomes oh so dangerous. A fucking typhoon that will burst out when its protection is down. Or, some might say, like a feline whose stomach is twisted by hunger that smells cooked meat from afar. With our “motherfucking” and other curses, my brother and I let it out by small doses. Inside, we are fucking healthy, my friend.”  
“Fucking twatpit covered in slimy shit.”  
“Lickerdoofus.”  
“Dicklifter.”  
“Mother fucking egg.”  
“Fishraper!”  
Kurloz turned his face towards her and… changed. Meulin realised something was wrong right when she saw him; it was naturally… different. His eyebrows were slightly pushed closer, his eyes smaller, his lips thicker; a thousand small changes turned his face into… Cronus’?  
“Vwowv, vwas that directed tovwards me? You just hit my sensibility wvith a giant boulder right nowv, vwait let me go in my parent’s garage and record a song about hovw important my feelings are and howv cruel the vworld is. You’ll see, my boyfrond – boyfriend, I mean – will avwenge me, it’s not that I’m too afraid to get into a fight but my hair may get all messy and I can’t afford that, do not evwer evwen START with my hair. Don’t evwen.”  
Meulin’s face distorted as her back and her stomach were aching with her delirious laughter. “How… Do you… Do that? You were so… so… GOOD AT IIIIIIIIIT!”  
“I do thank you!”  
“Omg it was his voice! If I wasn’t looking at your skeletal face while you were doing it I would’ve been pawsitive that it was Cronus’. It was… just… purrfect.” She sat there, astonished.  
“I am undeniably decent at imitation. It freaks people out, the expression on their faces when I perform are delightful to see.”  
“Oh my god you’re such a freak!”  
“I am” he acknowledged. “Oh, and I can also reproduce anybody's writing. I drove my poor professors insane.”  
“Oh my fucking god. So you can just do anything?”  
“No, not everything I am afraid. I… I am unable to swim.”  
“Doesn’t matter. I nefur swim. Water is evil.”  
“Water is the Devil’s saliva.”  
“Hey, Purrloz.”  
“Yes?”  
She laid down on his lap, feeling his fatless legs right under her head. “We need to set this straight, my shipping furiend. There is too little couples fur too many people. That must be changed.”  
“I categorically agree. Fear us, oh potential couples!”  
“Beclaws here we are, ready to force you together!”  
“Ready to tie you up to each other for a thousand days and nights until you understand that we are right.”  
“That you are the purrfect couple!”  
“We will terrorize them.”  
“We will be the supreme masters of Love and Hate.”  
“The Black Prince and the Red Mage.”  
“The Black Purrince and the Red Mage.”  
Meulin closed her eyes and set her imagination loose. Dancing in the stars with her newfound friend, she felt at home.


	2. For the Dancing and the Dreaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa! It's finally done. It took quite some time to write, and hey guess what? Nothing happens. Ha. Ha. I am such a funny person. *Throws flowers at myself and runs away to a magical world with Redglare and Pyralsprite*  
> I would just like to thank my reviewer for reminding me to get shit done. You get some of those flowers too.  
> Now with a quote at the beginning, and LINES between parts of the chapter. Wow. Very improve. Such better.  
> Enjoy.

_Is it true what they say?_  
 _Is it all just fun and games?_  
 _Or is there more behind the makeup,_  
 _And the faces full of paint?_  
  
_I ask you, do you want to come and play?_  
 _Hahahaha_  
 _Get the world to come and play_  
 _Hahahaha_

_\- Enter the circus, Christina Aguilera_

 

 

Meulin knew this place.

            She was surrounded by shades of green twisting in infernal curls, splattered all around the room devoid of any wall. Pulsing regularly.

            She shuddered and forced her tears to stay hidden.

            “Oh, I see. So it’s every night now?”

            “I don’t decide, Mewlin” giggle a little girl’s voice behind her. “You call for me efurry time. I never new you apurriciated my company so much!”

            “I hate you.”

She gritted and began to float forwards in this green eternity as the voice followed her.

            “Why?” she mumbled.

            “Why what?”

            “Why do I see you every night? Months and months without you haunting my head, and then suddenly here you are, invading my dreams all over again.”

            Meulin felt the presence stretch her lips into a smile. “You don’t usually speak.” It was an adult voice forced to echo in the vocal chords of a twelve years old. Shivers spread through her back.

            “Yeah, well it’s either that or hear you brag about the fact that HEY YOUR LIFE IS SHIT YOU’RE NOT OK YOU SHOULD KILL YOURSELF JOIN ME IN THIS PARADISE OF FUCKING BIRD PUKE LOOOOOOOLCAT IM SO CLEFUUUUUUR.”

            The girl behind her laughed. “Brilliant impurrsonation, Meulin. Really impurressive. Watch me being flattered. Go on, look at me.”

            A know tied in her stomach and a slight urge to vomit arose in her guts. “No.”

            “Oh really? Is this beclaws kitty cat is afuraiiiiiid?”

            “No!”

            “Watch her recoil under the sofa as the big bad dog chases her purround. WOOF!”

            Meulin cringed and let a stream of tears escape from her eyes. “Leave me alone!”

            “So weak,” whispered the voice behind her ear. “So, so weak.”

            Meulin fell on the floor and balled up, members trembling; she was three again, hands pressed against here eyes as her chest shook out of sobs. “ _You_ make me weak! How do you dare… Get out! Get out! I’m tired of not sleeping you fuck! Get out!”

            She could feel her breath right over her shoulder, but she wasn’t going to look. Oh, no. Her body was ready to fall apart into pieces.

            “I am here, because you’re afraid. I’m here, because you are lost. I’m here, because no matter how much you like Kurloz or Mituna or Karkat or Aradia, you can’t forget that you lost your friends. Your mother. Your family. I’m here, because you are lying to yourself when you say that you are fine. I’m here, because you try to forget, you try to escape, but your subconscious…”She pressed an ice-cold finger right in the middle of Meulin’s forehead. “Your subconscious, remembers.”

            Suddenly filled with a strength procured by this frozen touch, she snapped out of her cocoon and squeezed the finger in her hand. Her eyes opened.

            The girl that was standing in front of her was stunningly beautiful. At about thirteen years old, her straight hair was a matted mess over her angelic pale face; the blue hat that she always wore was made brownish by the dirt accumulated over time. Her clothes were nothing more than rags, way too small for her and barely covering her body; a green coat was swinging slowly in the air, only attached to the girl by the end of a sleeve. Yet all this state of filthiness did not seem to affect her skin, so pale, so cold.

            “I’m not really nice-looking, am I?” she sighs. “Maybe you should find a way to let me go, instead of keeping me inside here, rotting in the depths of you. Or are you too much of a coward to find an arrangement with your own mind?”

            Meulin’s mouth stayed shut. There was nothing left to say, but the other was waiting for something, a final touch, a final insult to throw. She showed her fangs in a cruel rictus.

            “So, when are you screwing Kurloz? It’s been a week now, you’re getting slower. What was your average with the guys back at the village, something like thirty seconds of conversation before being fucked? Whore.”

            Meulin hissed with all the strength that she could find in her lungs and her left hand scratched the air, in vain; the other was vanishing in the background with a laughter that echoed all around.

            She woke up and realised that she was breathing way, way too quickly. She forced herself to calm down but only made herself feel nauseous; so she laid on her uncomfortable bed instead, waiting patiently while her ribcage moved slower and slower. Once her vision had become clear again and the air had stopped burning her throat every time she breathed in, she rolled on the floor, stood up and walked outside of her room. She was standing in Kurloz’s room thirty minutes later, after slipping and nearly breaking her neck while climbing down the trees (she still refused to use any ladder whatsoever) and loosing herself twice.

            “Purrloz?”

            His right eye opened wide and twitched around until it finally found Meulin.

            “Bastet? Bad dream again?”

            She pouted and shook her head as her teeth were savagely ripping the tip of her nails off.

            He grinned, sat on his bed and curled up his longish arms around her thighs. “Would you think that kicking this mother fucking wretched ass of mine at table football would help you restore a certain amount of bliss in your wicked mind, sister?”

            “I pawfully accept” she said, rubbing his hair with affection. She liked his hair. They seemed like a pillow that would always be here for any sorry heart that needed it, and he was ready to offer them with a great enthusiasm. He once gave her the very official authorisation to braid them – but she had a tendency to be just a little violent, and the owner of this magnificent mane screamed his heart out at the very first braid; the authorisation was revoked, to her deepest and bitter regret. But she did get the chance to wash and delicately comb them, which had (only) brought small tears at the corner of his eyes while his teeth were gritting against one another.

            Kurloz’s room was really a mess; both brothers lived in a filth that wouldn’t be acceptable to any conscious mother, yet the cat girl often caught herself in the thought that the smell of sweat mixed with weed, faygo and cheap face paint gave a pretty sweet-smelling mixture that she had grown accustomed to. Like every single Alternian, they would stuck their various possessions in piles; many of those piles were placed in the common room, by generosity of their owners towards the whole community, but too many was too many, and they had quickly understood that they should probably keep some of those magnificent structures inside their personal habitations if they didn’t want Karkat screaming at their sorry asses while they were gently eating a bowl of very good pumpkin soup. Well, they didn’t actually obey his orders, which were very specifically TAKE OFF THOSE FUCKING MOUNTAINS OF SMURF CRAP OR I WILL DELICATELY EXPLODE THE SHIT OUT OF EVERY SINGLE HONK, SQUIDDLE, SCARVES, DRAGONS AND ANY OF THOSE FARTSMELLING BUTTFACES DIRK LIKES TO FUCK WITH AT NIGHT. The teenagers argued during the whole meal on the very delicate subject of whether exploding the shit out of scarves was physically possible while Karkat had to deal with a panicked Kankri that reminded him in a tirade that the owner of the scarves was dead since the cities, that this was highly triggering to the community and that he should apologise immediately to everyone and to Kanaya especially and in a particularly sorry way, maybe a drawing would be, in this extreme measure, necessary. He then realised that everyone was speaking about the scarves in a blasphemous way to the greatness that Rose was to all of us, yes Kanaya, to _all of us_ , and firmly decided to make a speech about how horrendously inadequate this whole situation was. He had to stop when one of the many peas and other feculent that were thrown at him landed right into his eyes, falling like a princess into Cronus’ arms for Meulin’s greatest pleasure, who made a mental note to make a fan fiction based on this scene. Next to her, Mituna was crying out of joy on Kurloz’s shoulder because it was his pea that entered in Kankri’s eyes and made it all stop.

            In the end, no one listened to Karkat’s order, but no one added any pile either – except for Vriska, who had decided that the common room was the perfect place to put her pile of broken 8 balls and the pieces of shattered glass that went along with it, originating in many bleeding feet.

            Anyways. Back to Kurloz’s room.

            To her greatest pleasure, Meulin had discovered during the first days that he actually had clothes that were not all skeletons outfits; one of the piles standing proudly in him room was a bunch of tee shirts decorated with skulls, cracked skulls, smiling skulls, raging skulls, skulls coming out of the tee shirt, skulls with sunglasses on, etc. If you dived into the pile you would eventually find chains and ample pants; Meulin wore all of those magnificent clothes with an exquisite happiness although she was having a lot of pain on keeping them _on_ her body due to the gigantic size of their owner. Kurloz never actually wore those anyways; he essentially bought them because Rufioh deeply despised them, but it was no fun wearing them when his hatefriend wasn’t there to look at him in such a dirty way when he dressed in the morning. Meulin didn’t understand the logic behind all of this, until Kurloz had blinked and added “he hated those, so he’d want me out of them as quickly and as often as possible.”

            Among those piles was a pile of faygo that was common to both brothers; faygo was a sacred drink that was to be taken very seriously. And Kurloz was a dedicated adult who would have taken it very seriously, if only he did not secretly loathe it and grimaced every time he had to force a few drops down his throat, for the sake of rituals. Meulin would joke about it as soon as the word “faygo”, “soda”, or even “drink” was pronounced by an unaware stranger.

            A third pile lying in a corner, nearly hidden in the light of the torches, was constituted of voodoo dolls, with a few pins tucked strategically into particularly painful places. Meulin lied on the pile, her long hair spread out on the sides like seaweeds on the shore, and took one out of the pile distractedly while Kurloz dressed up.

            “Who are they? Did you efur met them?” The one she had picked up was hand-made, probably by himself; it had long blond hair made of thick thread cautiously sewn to the head, and a pin going right through the skull.

            “They are all fictitious, I fear. No enthralling backstories that you would love to hear, no passionate shipping to be awaken in your mind.”

            “That’s a furctuous lie, I can smell it from here. They’re real aren’t they?”

            “Oh are they?”

            “Yeah they are! They’re all people you once mew. People you hated with all your heart. Am I right or am I right? Or am I right?”

            Kurloz stopped trying to pull his outfit up his body and stared at her during a few seconds, before smiling and saying “My compliments, young woman, you are mother fucking correct.”

            Meulin threw a satisfied grin and shuddered happily. Oh, how she loved feeling smart. “You’re such a creep! I can’t pawlieve that you catually torture those who stole your candies when you were fur.”

            “Addiction is a powerful thing” protested a slightly irritated giant.

            “Oh, of course, of course. Do you also purrgnaciously fuck them at night, to satisfy your wicked urges?”

            He bended towards her and gave her a hand to help her back on her feet. “Aye, lady. Careful, your hands might stumble on one that has been blessed with my fucking seed. Sticky.”

            She ignored his hand and threw a puppet at him that he caught smoothly; holding it firmly with both his hands, he began kissing the voodoo doll slowly, then licking it fervently as Meulin threw semi-amused, semi-disgusted shouts. His tongue was disturbingly long – but then again, so was his whole body. A groan escaped from the other side of the room; Kurloz stopped instantly, looking worryingly towards his waking up little brother.

            “Why must you wake a motherfucker in the middle of the night?” he grumbled, rubbing his eyes.

            “Brother, Bastet was experiencing a wicked nightmare and came here in search of mother fucking consolation. It is late, boy, there is no need to open those tired eyelids. Dive back into the soft, soft mother fucking pillow, made of a thousand gooses singing a sweet symphony to your ears. Feel the slumber slowly creep inside your body… Filling it… Filing it… and now you’re fucking asleep.”

            Kurloz waited for a reaction from his little brother for a few seconds; when none came, he relaxed his shoulders and smiled, satisfied.

            “Did you just hypawtise him?”

            “In some ways, yes. I purely hastened him into the state of profound mother fucking sleep, and as he is used to obey to my every command, it worked remarkably.”

            Meulin groaned, and Kurloz laughed softly. “Dear friend, I suffer to see you in such despair.”

            “Oh pawlease, don’t you dramewtise the situation” she snapped, sticking her tong out playfully.

            “Hypnotism is a mysterious practice, Bastet, it works well on only few individuals.”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know… It’s just a pawty it won’t work on meeeeeeeee!”

            He smiled and stared at her calmly while she sighted and took another voodoo doll. A small light flew through her eyes, and she smiled wickedly. “You can’t really torture them on a daily clawsis, can you? There’s too mewny of them. You know what you should do?”

            “I do mother fucking not, but I do relish this wicked gaze in your eyes, dear.”

            “Make a catpet out of them” she quipped, squeezing the puppet tight, seriously hoping that there was someone in the big bad world feeling invisible fingers snaring them. “Lay them all down on the floor.”

            “… And by doing so, I would stamp their pathetic limbs every time I took a step in those glorious fucking chambers.”

            “With a drop of imewgination, you could hear their bones cracking up and the blood rush out of their opened-up muscles with the thumping of their hearts.”

            Kurloz stood up, placed his hands on his ankles and looked at her with a charming defiance. “Leijon, you are a twisted motherfucker.”

            She also stood up and placed the doll against his chest; standing on the tip of her toes, she tried to get as close as she could to his face, without realising that his height made it basically impossible. “Makara, you _love_ this.”

            He raised his left eyebrow (he couldn’t raise the right one; Meulin had tried to make him succeed one night where they were particularly bored, but it had only ended up in him looking particularly dumb and believing that he had achieved his goal, when really he was just raising both his eyebrows in an angle that made him look like a doofus) and took her hands.

            “We’re doing this.

 

* * *

 

 

            The room most definitely looked better with a thick layer of voodoo dolls brushing under their feet. Gamzee had faintly protested about the light, but Meulin had snapped that she would scratch his skin raw if he did not go back to sleep now; it had worked surprisingly well. She wriggled her toes, feeling the soft moss that filled the puppets up, and looked at Kurloz with a decent amount of pride.

            “I can nearly hear their screams” she whispered. “And I like the feline.”

            “It is surprisingly satisfactory.”

            “Hush, Purrloz! Don’t mew as roardily, they could hear you!!”

            “You are two creepy motherfuckers” grumbled his little brother, watching them from his bed. “But hey, it’s all motherfucking good and smooth, because you know that it’s all fake and make-believe like a motherfucking fairy dancing salsa in the depth of the forest, right?”

            A shiver ran down Meulin’s spine. “Ah. Right.” She assimilated what he just said quietly, eyes lost inside the face of a doll with grey skin and two violet scars on his disfigured face (Kurloz seemed to have been particularly cruel with him, a violet smile drawn over his frown and his body generally destructed with a strange rage.) Kurloz stared at her with worried eyes.

            “Bastet? You forgot the dolls were not real, did you?”

            She turned her back at him, ashamed and confused. “Hum. Yes, I… I mean, we’ve been assembling them fur an hour and… Yeah, I thought it would catually work, beclaws… uuuhm…”

            He turned her around gently and fixed her for a few seconds before kissing her lightly on the cheek. “They shall be real if you want them to be” he winked.

            That was sufficient. She smiled again and laughed loudly, a hand on her stomach. “That was weird” she giggled, “let’s cat outta here.”

            “I thoughtfully mother fucking agree. We still have quite a few hours before breakfast, an I can hear the painful cries of the table football that is aching to be used.”

            “Oh my god, imagine if the table football actually had heats.”

            “Imagining a table football rubbing its sorry bottom against my none-consensual leg, in the hope that I will insert one of Horuss’ monstrous sextoy in its hole? No, thank you.”

            “Purrloz, you just did.”

            “Urh. I just did, didn’t I.”

            “Yup. And I am now imewgining you doing this tedious chore with a hidden pleasure.”

            “Don’t.”

            “Look at hiss! It just threw a sweet bunch of semen at your face.”

            “How does the mother fucking semen of a table football look like?”

            “It’s brown and thicker than afurage. Oh and there’s a few coins and a few pawieces of wood flowing in the thing.”

            “Amusing. I would rather imagine it quite dry and… Kitty, you’re humming this song again.”

            “Am I? I didn’t even roaralise it…”

            “This is most certainly driving the mother fucking mirth hidden in the pit of my dreadful stomach up to my wicked heart. I am positive I heard this lullaby somewhere in my fucking life. I just can’t recollect the fucking title.”

            “What makes me purrticularly anxious is that I only mew it after a dream with Nepeta.”

            Meulin wondered why a sudden silence dropped on them, heavy and unsought; she realised that she had never pronounced her name before. _Oh._

            They walked into the brightly lit common room, empty and surprisingly quiet (it had always been filled with people shouting and singing and playing and laughing).

            “I am quite certain you have never pronounced that name before in my humble company,” he spoke calmly. “Who was this person?”

            “She was… well… She was my sister” she answered, grabbing the handles of the foosball. “She’s dead.”

            “My most faithful condolences. May she dance in the palace of Lost Souls with all mirth flowing free in her body, liberated of all boundaries set by our conscience. A mother fucking men.”

            “Thanks, I guess” she chuckled.

            “Would it be considered as impolite if I dare ask why?”

            “Nope! We went to the big city, once, to get some impurrtant shopping done. She was furry young, eight years old, and had a purriosity that pushed her away from us; when our backs were turned, she left us and went wandering in town. We lost her. Her body was found in a dark alleyway, savaged. But when I say savaged, I mean…” She closed her eyes and tried to calm her shaking voice down. “I mean _destroyed_. To an unrecognisable point. It was… it was… it was a nightmare.” Her hole body shook for a few seconds, when she realised how cute her giant was, looking at her through his wide, blue eyes, confused and wondering how he could ever comfort her. She giggled softly and dried her tears. “She comes back, from time to time, to remind me of my purroblems that I tend to ignore. She catsually remind me that the memories I hide in the corner of my brain are still here.”

            “Oh… I see” he smiled.

They stared at the table for a few seconds, lost in their respective thoughts, but Meulin shook her head quickly and felt a smile coming back on her lips. After all, why stay sad? The past was far behind her and she did not need to dwell on it.

“Who cares! Let’s play” she shouted, suddenly very excited. She turned a handle brutally, and the ball flew right into his cage. “Gooooooal!”

Kurloz sighted and pulled his tongue out, to which Meulin answered by another goal.

“Dayum, boy, you suck.”

She scored again, and smiled provokingly. He shrugged and tried to use this moment of inattention to get the ball in her cages; but his movements were slow and clumsy, she blocked the ball and sent it rolling right in his cage. She threw a giggle, which quickly sifted in a powerful purr.

“I saw Sollux and Aradia yesterday at dusk, while I was walking my way back to my small habitat.”

“Really?” she threw excitedly, managing to stop the ball without even throwing a look at the foosball. “How did they look?”

“Sister, how do you even manage this? Your eyes were not even set on this vile game.”

“How did they looooooooook?”

“The word that could occur in one’s mind would be ‘cute’.”

“Ooooh, I see, mispurr Drama Queen. Beclaws you’re sooooo above red felines, aren’t you. What you see is just some lame pawblic display of afurction.”

“Well, as a matter of fact-”

“Cuz, y’know, fists thrown in the face of each ofur is soooooooo much more romantic.”

“I was indeed going to vow on both Messiahs’ teachings that-”

She pushed a finger against his lips, and managed to score again with her free hand. She wore her angriest look while snarling, “Makara, you’re pissing me off now.”

He took her finger off his mouth and, with a teasing smile, added “I was going to add that I was indubitably mesmerised by your matchmaking capabilities. These two seem to be made for each mother fucking other.”

A feeling of relief roared in her empty stomach. She grinned and scored once more.

“They _are_ a good match fur purr! Oh my god it’s so satisfuring! You have no idea… I didn’t have much to do, they just instantly… clicked!!”

“So do all the fortunate couples you have set together, my friend.”

Meulin blushed; “I repurrn the compliment. Damara and Mituna? I did not see this coming until they were lipurrally eating each ofur’s faces off. Good job with this. Did you see the bruises on their bodies?? Their fights are… _intense_.”

Kurloz cackled and, shaking his head, responded “They are criticized by many who agree on the fact that this relationship is filth, coated with filth, with a little bit of filth over the whole thing.

“Omg yes! They are sooo dirty. I… kinda like it?”

“I secretly love it too” he winked and added “although a continuous supervision is absolutely required.”

“How so?”

“Well, it appears that they are having a problematic none-understanding of the (one would think) clear sentence that is ‘no sex in public’. And… well, Mituna’s mental health makes it exceedingly easy to abuse him when you are a heartless mother fucker.” Kurloz’s expression darkened.

The heavy door opened and a very small and very frail body entered. Gamzee smiled and laid down on the pile of pillows in the corner of the room. The thick smell of weed spiralled in the closed space; Kurloz frowned as it reached his nostrils.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey motherfuckers” croaked the smallest Makara.

“Gamzee” greeted Kurloz. “Dear brother, come and help me defeat this cruel lady. I have reasons to think the score is presently 200-0.”

He walked cumbersomely towards the foosball and held out a red bottle of faygo to Kurloz. Meulin laughed loudly; her friend sent her a deadly look and took the bottle with a shaking hand. He brought it to his lips, very, very slowly, and poured a small quantity between his lips. Turning his back to Gamzee so that his fellow religious adept did not see what followed, his face twisted infernally while his tongue scraped against his upper teeth to get rid of the taste, while Meulin was chortling grossly. Gamzee was watching the whole scene with a puzzlement made light by the amount of drugs in his blood. He put the bottle on the ground and stared at the table, fascinated. “Motherfucker. I mean, like… table football. Foosball. Whatever the fuck. You know what they are? Uh? Kurloooooooz?”

Kurloz sighted, his grip tightened around the handles. “Oh mirthful Messiahs, please bless this stupid boy of your righteous vision. Gamzee. You are angering me greatly.”

The eyes of the little boy suddenly shone with doubt. “That’s good, right?”

“No, it’s not fucking good.” Kurloz took a deep inspiration, breathed out, and continued playing and loosing foosball, alone against Meulin. “Hear me, and listen carefully. Rhapsodizing in front of every fucking thing is a good thing. One could say, an excellent thing. Life is full of miracles, and this is a fact.”

“Except for bed sheets. They are the incatnation of the devil.”

“Oh dear gods. Putting them on your cover and your mattress is a one way ticket to Hell.”

“Infurnal. Also? Dust in the eye.”

“Agreed. Pus is a damnation too.”

“The fact that corpses smell so bad; _that’s_ a shit decision coming furom God. I mean, imewgine without the smell, you could just keep the dead body in your basement until it decompawses.”

            “Indeed, but then you would still be bothered by the bones. My guess is they would take 40 to 50 years to decay.”

            “Bones are easier to hide.”

            “Arguable. You could also crush them to a powder.”

            They realised that Gamzee was watching them with frightened eyes. Meulin grinned, plainly showing her teeth, and giggled “Don’t worry, we won’t kill you yet. Purrloz, you were saying?”

            “Oh, yes. Miracles. It is upright to see them… when they are indeed here; unfortunately, this is but a small part of our religion, brother. The most important is to create miracles yourself, and contribute to the improvement of this wretched world. What do _you_ do in this optic? Believe me, little one, walking around smoking is not the reason why the Mirthful Messiahs sent you here. Now, move your infamous butthole and go do something.”

            “Motherfucker! I never saw it this way. _You’re_ a miracle, bro.”

            Meulin had the impression that Kurloz’s eyes, as they were meeting hers, filled her with an unprecedented fury. He was infusing her of a mirth, of a violence that could only have been born in the pit of Hell – but who knows, maybe Hell was in his stomach. Meulin wouldn’t even be surprised if it was. The flow of incoming rage stopped as quickly as it had begun, and the giant grabbed his brother and pushed him against the wall, up until Gamzee was completely lift in the air by the only force of his brother’s left arm. Kurloz’s face was still calm, yet he was spreading hatred all around him. She felt as if a fog of mirth had surrounded him, spreading around, trapping everyone inside into an unbreakable circle of revenge and a plain envy of ripping, slaying, licking, stabbing, breaking. Meulin smiled, feeling at home. This was the atmosphere she was meant to be in. Her memories, the darkest and the brightest, would disappear to make place to the emotions, finally unrestricted, released in her mind and body, forming a storm of passion and energy conveyed into a furious desire to fight. The fog receded toward the giant, to Meulin’s greatest regret, as he put his terrified brother on the ground.

            “Out of sight” he murmured, his voice perfectly steady. Gamzee ran towards the door, tears and hiccups shaking his small, weak 12-years-old body.

            Meulin stared at the magnificent being standing in front of her; she set her eyes on him, on his slim face and his over-sized eyes which seemed purple under the light, and he replied by staring in her green eyes with gravity. Never had she met someone that hid such a profound well of obscurity in his guts before… Yet she had never been so thrilled. How could anyone guess that there was another dimension hiding behind this gentleman? It was another universe, another range of emotions. The reality that had always excited her seemed so boring at this instant. But who cared? Kurloz was here to pull her out whenever it all became dull.

            “Hello! Kurloz, Meulin,” greeted Terezi, walking in the room while rubbing her eye with her sleeve. She was wearing oversized pyjamas; walking on the extra length of her pants, she approached the two of them, smiling. “What have you guys been up to?”

            “You had sex” stated Kurloz and Meulin, exactly at the same time.

            “Hey! Do you know what ‘private life’ means? I’m offended right now.”

            “Have you been listening to Kankri or something?”

            “Oh, yeah, of course I have. Because listening to the gibbering of some douchebag playing a passive-aggressive war with the whole world is really something that I absolutely enjoy.”

            “Roarvalry?” asked Meulin, curious.

            “No,” answered Kurloz, “they have no respect whatsoever for one another, yet they hate each other with a burning rage. Didn’t I auspistized you and him, at some point?”

            “Yeah, you did.”

            “Oh my god!! Guys!! That’s not the hissue!! Terezi had her first time last night!”

            “Of course” he grinned. “So, please, do tell us what was this first experience of yours.”

            “Well…” she played with her fingers, anxious. “It was…”

            “Gross?”

            “Playful?”

            “Dominant/Dominated?”

            “Violent?”

            “Did you eat her eye?”

            “I sent her in a very magical space” answered the young girl with a wink.

            “Details, young lady!”

            “Well it was really good but…”

            Kurloz probed her, smirked and said, “She gave you the impression that she completely and utterly ignored what she was mother fucking doing, yet she seemed proud as a spider who just caught its first insect and trembles of excitation at the prospect of tasting its prey, and you did not have the courage to tell her how you really felt.”

            “Hey, calm down mister. I’m the one supposed to read minds.”

            “Sadly, I am not a mind-reader. I would rather control them; it turns out to be much more beneficial.”

            “Freak” said the dragon girl, pulling her tongue out. “And yes you were right. But it was both our first time, I was not expecting perfection.”

            “Hmm… Yet you are convinced that you were somehow decent at it.”

            “Oh, yeah. I definitely ruled. She _screamed_. That’s pretty good for a first time, isn’t it?”

            “Indeed, Daddycreep and Mommykitty are proud of you.”

            “Oh, yes we are, young girl. Oh yes we are,” agreed Meulin, nodding very seriously.

            Terezi smirked, satisfied, and they all walked towards the dining hall (Meulin hummed the song and Kurloz screamed out of frustration “Dear holy Mirth, I know this tune. It drives me crazier than a well done analingus.”

            “Urrhhh! Unsee!! UNSEE!!”)

            Meulin stared at the sleepyheads moving slowly across the hall until her eyes met Karkat’s; she turned instantly towards Kurloz and whispered to his ear “Karkat has heart troarbles.” She giggled and waited for the young man to approach her.

            “Hey. Could I speak to you?”

            Karkat’s intonation immediately indicated to Meulin that something was wrong; in fact, something was very, _very_ wrong. She felt a curiosity intertwined with a strong sense of fear tangle in her stomach, and she pushed him out of the noisy hall maybe slightly too violently.

            “What what what?” she flustered.

            Karkat put his hands in his jeans pocket (grey fabrics sewn together with bright red thread, because Kanaya was “sick and tired to the bone of your indecent black outfit”) and, gazing at the ground, he mumbled slowly “I broke up with Meenah.”

            Meulin heard the crack sound of a piece of her Castle of Hearts breaking. She gawked at her chief, open mouthed and terrified eyes. “But… But… No! That’s impawssible! No! I would’ve seen it coming… Oh my god, what happened?”

            Karkat had a puzzled look on his face, looking surprise that Meulin didn’t guess anything at all. “It just fucking happened. You know, like stuff do? Sometimes? They happen. Shit happens. It just walks towards you with his magical stickman legs and, with a solemn look and a deep voice, growls ‘I happened.’”

            “Cat the crap fur a fucking second” she snapped. “So it just… Hapurrned? You weren’t attracted to her anyroar?”

            “Well of course she’s still sexy” he groaned. “She’s not going to become an ugly fuck all of a sudden. I mean, you’ve seen her. Everybody would kill a whale to have a furious night with her. You’d kill a whale to have a furious night with her.”

            “Oh, I’m afuraid guys are my only speciality” she grinned.

            “Heterosexual, are you?” sighted Karkat. “You’re probably the only one here.”

            “I know!! Do you know how great it is fur shipping?? All the limits imposed by sexuality are basically abolhissed. How cool is that? Purretty cool, I answer. Extremely, fucking, cool.”

            Meulin quickly realised he was certainly not in the mood to engage in a passionate discussion about her occupations while he was busy desperately trying to win a war.

            “Hey, let’s go up there” she smiled. Karkat agreed silently, and they began to walk towards the city in the trees.

            “Did you get your mom on the radio?”

            “Omg!! Yess! I was so happy! She’s safe and settled. Helping your purrother in this hell America has become.”

            “Hmm.”

            Meulin frowned. “I’ve nefur seen you so absent minded. What’s on your mind, purrecisely?”

            He licked his lips and answered with a broken voice, “I’m wondering whether it was all in vain. You know, whether the preoccupations it brought me surpassed the joy of being with her.”

            “And? What’s the answer?”

            “The answer is, no. No, fucking no.”

            Meulin felt the irrepressible urge to bite a tree as hard as she possibly could without losing her teeth. How did she not see this coming? How did she ever think this damned relationship could ever work out? She tried to contain the thick fireball of guilt that was growing in her stomach. The notion that she kept two unhappy beings together instead of breaking the couple apart and send them on happier fates was burning her insides as she rememorized all the signs, all the smiles that should have been here and that were not, all the laughter that was missing, all the anger that Meenah should have been able to either fuel, either calm down, but that stayed in Karkat untouched, unchanged by her, a wild ball of rage desperately waiting to be tended by someone.

            They climbed up the ladder slowly, as if both of them did not want to have this conversation that will uncover their failures. They sat on one of the bridges, staring at the raising sun.

            “So. What hapurrned? How did you break up?”

            “It’s boring. I mean, 2001: Space Odyssey boring. Yeah, it’s fucking boring, don’t look at me with those eyes of a wet kitten, I hated this movie. Anyways. She wanted to have sex, I didn’t, she insisted, and it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back and makes it a whimpering vegetable for the rest of his life. I told her it was over, I left. Done. See? I told you. Nothing to see here ladies and gentlemen, you may calmly regain your pathetic lives, go back to caring after your daughters and sons, take the metro and smell stranger’s armpits every morning at 6 and have sex with each other all the fucking time, while I am here trying to have a part in a war that tore us apart.”

            He pushed his head on his bent knees and closed his eyes.

            “I’m fucking done. I’m tired, I’m used, I feel like I’m rotten inside. You know, how we all lost someone that was close to us. We all lost a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a brother. I lost everyone. You see all those dumb faces eating at lunch in the eating hall? Well, you have no idea how much I’m attached to every single one of them. Some of them are cruel, some of them are legitimately stupid, and they’re all fucking scary. Half of these kids could kill you in your sleep and feel no fucking remorse, the other half will stare at your dead corpse and be fascinated by the colour of your blood. I don’t know what past me was thinking when he assembled this army of psychopaths. They’re not following anyone. I might as well be pouring my guts out to a fucking wall and it wouldn’t make any difference. They don’t listen. I have so many plans, Meulin, so many things I want us to be doing. We’re going nowhere. We’re walking in a desert and we can’t even realise that there’s nothing coming towards us. I have a hundred people behind my back calling me Crabby – thanks to your skeleton boyfriend and his nicknames – while they won’t move one tiny inch of their crap painted ass for this city. And I love every single one of these assholes.”

            He stopped for a moment; Meulin took the occasion and spoke quietly, “Why are you telling me this? I mean, I’m feline with it, but… why me?”

            He brought his legs closer to his chin, and grumbled “I don’t know. I just… So many people died, and for every single one of them it hurt like hell. It’s like if someone ripped your nails off one by one and forced you to watch fucking The last airbender (the movie). I needed… I needed someone to _be_ here.”

            Meulin frowned; she knew where this conversation was going.

            “I needed someone to help me out with all this. With the pain and all the bloody masquerade that comes with it. I don’t know where the fuck she was, but she wasn’t here for me. I hate her for this. I hate her for ignoring my feelings and my pain and my angst. She keeps messing everything up, and she--”

            “Will you _shut up_!!!” Karkat looked at Meulin in astonishment, certainly not expecting her to intervene. “Oh my fucking god, do you even listen to yourself? Must efurrything in this furcking world adapt to your every wishes?”

            He moved his lips, trying to pronounce something, anything, and then simply grumbled “I don’t want everything to adapt to my wishes.”

            “Oh really? You just told me right fureaking now that you wanted her to be here fur you. I’m giving you three seconds to think of a moment where you were here fur _her_.”

            “I was! I… I…”

            “TIME’S UUUUUUUUUP” Meulin roared right next to his ear. “Nothing, eh? I didn’t expect more furom you, sir. Do you realise that you must also do things fur the other?”

            “Shut up! Shut your fucking face! Shut the fuck up!”

            “Panicking, are you?” She spotted a certain amount of tremendous pain in his watery eyes. She smiled wickedly before adding, “Maybe if you would have left her some space instead of scarring her away, it would’ve worked out! Wow! Who knows! But nooooooooo! Because the Righteous Expert Of Romance seems to forget that relationships involve _two people_.”

            She felt the throbbing pain of his fist against her jaw. Turning around to spit the blood that was filling her mouth, she felt his small body shake.

            “Bet you’re not even going to be sorry for this shit” She cackled and sat back next to him, her legs rocking in the air.

            “You’re mad” he sighted. “I can understand why Kurloz likes you so much.”

            “We all are, and you’re our King, don’t furget it” she winked.

            “I guess I am.”

            “Also, I’m right.”

            “About my relationships?”

            “Yisss.”

            “Of course you are. Do you think I’m an innocent fool crying because the world is not revolving around my pathetic being? I know who I am, Meulin.”

            She sat uncomfortably, massaging her jaw. “Why aren’t you changing then?”

            “Because it’s who I am. Are you going to change a skyscraper once it’s built because you realised that holy fucktart! You completely forgot the aeration, and it’s beginning to smell like hell on earth in there with all the rotting bodies of people that died due to an absence of oxygen?”

            “YES!! Of course you’re going to destroy the shit out of it! You can’t live without ventilation, Karkat!” She snapped her tongue angrily, and added “So that’s it? You just abandon?”

            “It’s not the first one. Meenah, it’s not the first one. There was Terezi, and… well, and Dave, he… yeah.”

            “Boyfriend?”

            Karkat let a few chuckles escape. “Is that what they say? No, he wasn’t my boyfriend, because I’m just a shithead who doesn’t know how to people. I would always fuck shit up between us, eventually. I don’t know how I gathered so many people under me. They probably followed me because they saw me dancing in my own shit, trying to become a phoenix rising from my dejections and took pity of me.”

            “Nooooooooo! Don’t say this this is a horrible thing to saaaaaaaaay!!!! They followed you beclaws you’re the only one around here that could actually keep such a herd of diffurent weird as hell minds togefur. Hey, they might call you Crabby and they might hate you when you tell them to get their shit straight, but oh my god I can feel they secretly admire you.”

            “That is such a consolation” he mumbled, but Meulin did not seem to grasp the irony.

            “You’re welcome! And we’re setting you in a new relationship. We’ll help you get on. Purromise.” She grinned and stood up, howling “We’re going to miss breakfast!!!” After a few steps, she looked at him with pleased eyes before adding “Oh, and you should nefur have hit me. I owe you, honey.”

            Karkat stared at her with blank eyes, before groaning “Proud as a feline.”

            Meulin nodded and sprinted towards the hall. Her feet tumbling on the platform creaked infernally; she realised that she had grew to love this sound. She loved the scent of the forest, the walls of the city, the sight of Kurloz. She loved the way people treated her like a human being instead of some shipper catfreak. She loved the way they looked at her with expectations when asking for her advices. She loved the fact that she was allowed to feel proud and violent. Her mop of hair danced behind her back like the mane of a lion, and she roared towards the sky, her guts spilling out joy and fury. An Alternian that was calmly sitting next to his hive gazed at her with a fascinated look on his face, and answered to her scream by one even louder, fists closed and a smile on his lips. They exchanged a high five that left her hand sore.

            She arrived to the hall in no time, sweating and out of breath. She entered in the room right as Kurloz was getting out, a piece of bread, some cheese and an apple in his hand.

            “Kittylady! I was planning on bringing you this meagre fucking sustenance.”

            She snatched the bred out of his hand and dug her teeth in it, regretting it wasn’t raw meat (she really really really wanted raw meat right now.) “Hey, Karkat and Meenah purroke up.”

            A thousands stars of hope lit up right at the same time in Kurloz’s eyes. He grinned, showing proudly his perfect dentition (while the one of his brother was crocked and yellowish). “May I…”

            “Our chief is all yours to use in the darkest romance!”

            He brought his two hands together as if he was praying on of his Gods above, but instead turned towards her and bent his head modestly. “I thank you, young lady.”

            “Don’t ofurdo it” she chuckled.

            He shrugged and clasped his hand on his forehead. “Hot mother fucking blatant fuck! I forgot. Horsepiss drinker asked us to gather with him at the training centre. Your weapons, my dear, are finally finished.”

            She shrieked and jumped excitedly. “Oh my god! Oh my god oh my god oh my god! Yaaaaaaaaay! We’re finally having a purroper fight today!”

            “I am most truthfully looking forward to this visceral combat.”

            “Hey Purrloz, do you wanna fight till blood this time?”

            “As a matter of fact, I do.”

            The metallic door creaked as they entered in the underground, torches alit along the corridor, as always. Meulin preferred certainly fighting outside in plain light, out of this claustrophobic building and its dim lightening. She sighted and remembered instantly that she had weapons. It was a dream becoming true. While still a little girl, her mother had taught her the art of fighting with sticks and wooden shields; as her age slowly increased, the weapons became more and more sophisticated, and soon enough she was able to wield pretty much anything, as long as it could fit in her hand. The fact that she was a warrior came in evidence right after the death of her sister. The thought came to her mind with bitterness, remembering the embarrassment and the pain she felt when she realised that she had gotten stronger and stronger, from the day her sister died until now. Some time before the accident, she had read an adult’s book about cannibals, with precise and particularly gory descriptions and even an occasional picture. She remembered her little eleven-year-old brain processing the information as she skimmed the pages, a feeling of unease growing in her stomach like a plant slowly taking over, circling around her guts and growing towards her throat. She decided to stop when a page took her attention; it explained that the reason why many tribes ate their enemies was to absorb their strength, their courage and their nobility. After Nepeta’s death, she strangely felt like a cannibal that ate her own sibling and thus absorbed the whole of her. She dismissed the thought precipitately when she saw Horuss standing there, trying as hard as he could to smile although Kurloz was in the same room as he was.

            “Meulin!” he said happily, “I thought you’d never come.”

            “What? What do you meown?”

            “Well, you know, I did finish your weapons a few days ago.”

            “You CAT?”

            He looked at her with a confused smile, wondering how he should react. She turned around and threw a threatening gaze at the giant standing next to her, distractingly looking around.

            “I do not approve the way this mother fucking pisspot stares at you when you are looking away” he mumbled distantly.

            “What??? It’s not a pawlid reason for not telling me right when you learnt about it!!!”

            He shrugged and threw a provoking smile at the girl, before kneeling and watching a piece of broken robot closer. She sighted and turned her back at him, greatly annoyed, before realising that she was also turning her back at Horuss. She coughed, embarrassed, and continued the conversation, “Hmm, well, can you show me?”

            “Oh! Yes, of course. I had forgotten.”

            Meulin shivered and, as he disappeared in another room, turned towards the other one and winced. “Oh my god. His smile _is_ extremely creepy. Do you think it’s unfit if I feel a strong urge to sew it shut?”

            He stood up and stretched his arms lasciviously. “No, it is perfectly accepted by our social norms and it follows flawlessly the conduct our fucking society expects us to have towards one another. Go on, dear.”

            “Eeeh, I’ll just scratch your purretty face instead. It’ll be as satisfying.”

            “We both know I am too tall.”

            “I don’t.”

            “Oh, when I said ‘we’ I meant me and my superego. No one knows about my height. It has always been a secret between me and myself, locked deep inside a dusty corner of my limitless mind.”

            Horuss came back, holding a few pieces of metal between his thick fingers. His smile unfortunately came back with him too, but Meulin decided to concentrate on his deep blue eyes instead of his phallus-shaped helmet or his glittering teeth. She could feel how angry Kurloz was at seeing him smile recklessly, she could feel his desire to see him crying and screeching and begging for mercy.

            At first, the pieces did not resemble to anything at all. She took a few moments before understanding what she was looking at… and then shrieked piercingly. She picked the pieces between her hands, gazing at each one closely. “They’re amazing” she whispered. There were ten claws that she could stick on each of her fingers, covering the whole of the length, with two articulations placed at each phalanx so that she could fold them into a fist. The claws in themselves were approximately one inch and a half, curved, sharp, and pointy. The rest of the pieces consisted of both parts of a metal jaw that had been moulded especially for her mouth, which was covered in sharp teeth with which Meulin could bite human flesh. All of the set was made in a shiny grey metal, reflecting her face a thousand times. She bit her lower lip, thrilled. “Oh my furrcking god, Horuss. That you so much. I love you. This is pawsome. I can’t even expurress my felines right now” she giggled, watery eyes. “It’s really purrfect.”

            “I try my absolute best” answered Horuss sweetly. “My father helped.”

            She turned towards Kurloz so that the other one was not tempted of bringing her into a conversation, and began to slip on the claws one by one. “Oh my god Purrloz. Oh. My. God. Look at this jaw. _Look at these claws_. I shall have no mercy today” she hissed gladly.

            “Two weeks have passed since my last fight. Bring it, mother fucker. I will rip your throat to the glory of the Messiahs.”

            “I will spill your guts on the ground and sacrifurce to Satan you for my own wealth and purrosperity” Once the last finger was set up, she placed the metallic jaw in her mouth and clasped her teeth in it. Horuss had warned her that it would be extremely uncomfortable; it was. She shrugged the pain off and tried to speak, abandoning after moving her arms excitingly and grumbling something like “uuuh waah eehee ee, ewar”. They waved goodbye to Horuss and walked outside – well, Kurloz walked outside, while Meulin jumped behind cheerfully. They arrived quickly to a sandpit, wet from the morning’s dew, and set themselves on both end, with Meulin desperately trying to get a comprehensible insult out of her throat, and Kurloz nodding relentlessly at every single one of her attempts. Finally, the young girl bounced in the air, and Kurloz stood there waiting, smiling, the tip of his fingers playing with the end of on of his murderous cables. He waited until she was high in the air, claws plunging towards his face, before sending a cable slapping the air that circled around her waist. He pulled it violently towards the ground, but Meulin anticipated it and landed feet first, stabilizing her body with the help of her metallic fist. She guffawed and pushed on her legs with all her strength, throwing her body towards his. She scratched and bit as he painfully found ways to attach her limbs to his metallic threads; when his work was done and he could not see through the thick layer of blood covering his face, he pulled on all of the strings at once, brutally shoving his body backwards. He heard an awkward gasping sound slipping out of her mouth; she was contorted in an incredibly uncomfortable position that would, in usual times, be seen as impossible relative to the capabilities of the human body. She looked at him with pleading eyes, tried to bite the cables and, when nothing happened, grumbled “yeah, you can let me go now.” When the other one said nothing, she added precipitately “Hey. It huuuuuuuuurts. Pawlease?” He nodded and loosened the pressure applied on the cables. She fell down like a puppet rid of its master, with the unpleasant impression that every single one of her aching limbs was going through a severe internal haemorrhage. She was pretty certain that her legs were, at some point in Kurloz’s sadistic twisting and pulling at the cables, over her head. Or were they her arms? She had no idea.

            “This was _hell_ , Bastet” he smiled, absolutely satisfied. She chuckled before realising that his face was made unrecognisable by the blood.

            “God. You’re furked up.”

            “Am I?” he licked the corner of his mouth. “Blood and face paint taste exquisitely fucking upright.”

            “Better than faygo, anyways.” She pulled out her tongue as he threw her a reproachful look. She tried to move, failed. She looked at the leaves over them, constantly blocking them from the sun, a sweet cover protecting them from the big bad world at war. She was blocked by the leaves and blocked by the walls surrounding the city an blocked by her own body that would not answer to any of her command, yet the stinging pain in her bones felt a lot like freedom. She had always thought that freedom was running in the forest alone, unrestricted by social norms and laws and the population’s expectations, but this had nothing to do with it. Freedom was fighting your friends until your body crumbles under the weight of their pounding fists. Freedom was shredding the blood of other members of the community, and everyone being totally fine with that.

            She felt the tip of her fingers coming back, her hands, her toes. She got on her legs as soon as her body allowed her, cringing and puffing as she forced on her arms and feet. Kurloz helped her out, pulling her up with a teasing smile. “You are truly an old mother fucking grandmother deep inside.”

            “Am not” she panted. “Nefur felt so alive.”

            A rejoiced expression spread out on his face, looking like a child who finally found someone with the same passions. He nodded happily, and helped her walk towards her hut.

            “Hey. You should go and see Roxy.”

            “Why?” asked the surprised giant.

            “Well, most of the cuts are not deep, but the three of them right in the middle are purretty severe” she chortled.

            “I have seen worse.”

            They decided to miss lunch, perfectly aware of the comments that were going to crawl and encircle them as soon as they arrived in the crowded room – fighting until blood sprouted out was a pretty clear sign of a mutual desire to enter in a passionate black romance. The bored kids would not have missed one single occasion to get between the two of them.

            After a particularly amusing session of Kurloz pretending not to feel any pain while Roxy tended his wounds, they began to walk towards her room; when they finally stumbled to the ladder, they realised that Vriska was waiting for them, a grin on her face.

            “Heyyyyyyyy Kurloz. What’s that?” she added when she saw the blood.

            “Oh, this is none of your business.” Meulin realised that something was wrong, something was very wrong. Kurloz’s body had… tensed up. His shoulders were pushed backwards, his stomach inwards. She wished she could say he took the same position as he did when he was about to attack her, but it wasn’t. This was… this was… cowering? _No, it can’t be. You’re misinterpreting it. She’s fourteen, he’s six feet six. Shut up Meulin._

            “Wow wait, I just realised that I don’t care! I’m not here to watch your pathetic relationship evolve. You two stink, by the way.”

            He stood silent, slightly biting his lower lips. Meulin squeezed his arm a little and stared at him, expecting him to smile and to tell her to fuck off. _She’s part of your otp. How could you be afraid of her?_

            “What do you want?” he finally groaned.

            “You _know_ what I want!”

            “I said no” he snapped. “I said no every mother fucking time. No.”

            Vriska rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, a smirk stretching her lips. “I’m growing up, Kurloz. I’m realising stuff. All. The. Time.” She stepped closer to him, before adding slowly “You know what the old douchebag said. _With great power comes great responsibility_. All those Alternian kids, they don’t know about all this massive power that’s between your two bare hands. Not yet. But what would happen if they learn? They would realise that you can control them. That will scaaaaaaaare them, freak. Believe me, it will.”

            She leaned back against a tree, satisfied, waiting for his answer. He clapped his hands slowly, heavy with sarcasm. “Bravo, Spiderman” he sighed. “Your manipulation techniques are sharpening by the day. Although I would comment on the plain fact that you are still quite obvious. The best manipulation is operated whilst the victim is unaware of what is happening to them.”

            “Or when they’re sleeping.”

He shook under the blow. “You could see it in such ways, yes. My answer stays the same.”

“I don’t mind. I’ll just go and see your little friends.”

“If you interact with Mituna by any means, I will kill you.”

“Oh, I know.” She winked and left them, swinging her arms gladly.

“Cat was all this about?”

He rubbed his eyes. “Trauma. Many of us went through the worse nightmare you could possibly think of. Many of us have seen mother fucking Hell, kitty. I had to help them.”

“You mean, beclaws of war?”

“Yes. The army is horrendous. Terrible things have been witnessed by the kids here. They came to me, imploring. I… cured them. I helped them to forget – a little – through hypnotherapy.”

“Oh my god! You’re a doctroar?”

He laughed faintly. “Anyways. You have seen me hypnotise bee-fucker and my brother. I solely need to snap my fingers and they fall deep into the fucking land of dreams and docility. Well, octobitch believes that I can control everyone in such ways.”

“And… you can’t, right?”

Kurloz’s eyes met her for a long, long time. “No” he finally answered. “Of course not. This practice requires much training. She is eight times a fool.”

His smile comforted her, and she pushed on her arms and legs to haul herself up the ladder. They had to rest for some time, lying on the wooden platform, breathless and hurt.

“I have a deal to purropose, Makara.” She mumbled when they stumbled in her house, falling on the ground, letting their bodies faint while their minds stayed wide awake.

“Say it, dear girl. Say it.”

“What about we nefur, efur leave this place?”

“I fear my body dictates this issue.”

“Well, what is it saying????”

He placed both his hands on his chest and closed his eyes, concentrating. “Oh, it agrees.”

“Yissssss.”

Her room had quickly become a mess. Sheets of paper were covering he floor, sometimes reassembling in small piles; everywhere, those pages covered in a tiny, furious scribbling hid the floor from anyone’s vision – there was also a decent amount of leaves, that she used every time she had used all of her paper ration. She had tried to hang some on the walls at first, but soon became confronted by the limited ration of scotch tape and was forced to let them lay on the ground. She felt quite anxious about the state of her room, yet quite comforted at the same time; anxious because her mother had a strict policy about keeping her room clean permanently, comforted because the constant mess seemed to sooth the general atmosphere of Alternia, and she certainly cherished this feeling of blending in so smoothly. She pushed herself on her arms to watch around, realising that something was… amiss. Biting her lips, she scanned her room, feeling this sense of emptiness that rooted in her min whenever she had forgotten something big.

Ah. Now she remembered.

Her teeth dug in her lips until she tasted blood.

 

* * *

 

 

A cold wind had risen, blowing in their cold faces, freezing the bare skins of their arms, stealing the noise of the paper that was ripped furiously far away from her. They were even further up the city, standing on the edge of a very small platform built at the very top of an enormous tree, one of Rufioh’s secrets.

She threw the pieces of paper in the wind with a groan.

“Why would you possibly want to ruin such a stunning fucking view with your disgraceful papers?”

“What view? All I see is the furest.”

He let out an amused tssk, before resuming his incessant gazing of the treetops while she cautiously ripped another sheet to shreds.

“What is all of this, anyways?” he asked, and Meulin could feel his mind was still flying over the trees like a reborn phoenix. She knew memories were tightly connected between him and this place, memories of a thousand kisses with the Lord of Bones.

“Efurrything I wrote about Meenah and Karkitty. It needs to disappear.”

“Why? Because you feel a tremendous guilt at the simple idea that you failed once in the whole of your existence?” he smirked and grabbed one of the papers.

“Yes. I don’t want it around me anymore.” She took another stack of paper and began destroying them while the skeleton read the lines on the paper, eyes squirted into two slits. “Why are your eyes doing this?”

“Doing what?” he raised his head, eyes fully recovering their usual width.

“When you read, they… Oh my god, you need glasses!”

He shrugged and continued reading the paper. “They make me look like a ponderous mother fucking fool.”

“Drama queen” she hissed, choosing not to insist on it as she was not in the sarcastic mood needed to mock him.

            “I feel pretty lame” she spat. “How cat I have not seen it?”

            “Oh dear, this fanfiction is… intense.”

            “It was there! Hiding in plain sight! Meenah has a constant enthusiasm, but she doesn’t know how to share it with others, espeacepurrly not with a crab such as Karkat. It’s not… contagious.”

            “What are my eyes setting upon? I held the grand belief that sexual intercourses that happened under the covers of every red romance were supposed to contain a smidgen of romantic essence…”

            “She gets irritated so easily! How could he efur please her? Oh my goooooooood!”

            “Bastet, I am quite certain this could be qualified as an intensely extreme branch of rape” he gasped, eyes staring at the paper covered in her writing.

            “As if you don’t imagine stuff like that all the time!”

            “Oh, I do. My dreams have set my dearest friends into stories illustrating the most unconventional part of human decadence. But my relationships do not evolve around love nor romance.”

            “Do you catually think it matters?”

            “Doesn’t it?”

            “No. Once in the most furious actions, there is no love or hate. Only passion purredomines.”

            He set his eyes on the horizon, letting the thought settle in his mind.

            “But now it’s all ofur. My OTP is gone with the wind”

            Kurloz busted out of laughter. “I do not deserve the title of fucking drama queen when you are acting as such. The paper was flying in front of you when your words were fleeting from your mouth, it was magnificent.”

            “Shut up.” She mumbled incomprehensibly, until Kurloz rose to his feet, his mop of hair moving only slightly in the wind.

            “There are many others waiting for your counsel. Dirk and Jake are certainly becoming, one would say, a mother fucking thing.”

            “Horrible relationship. It will happurrn, but it won’t last, believe me.”

            “Well then, you should undoubtedly try and make it work.”

            “I can’t do this! I won’t put two peopurr togefur if I know it will fail.”

            “Do not play the game with me, Leijon. I am perfectly aware of the fact that making people feel mother fucking good does not drive you. Honour drives you.”

            She refused to answer to such a cold statement.

            “You must think this is an excellent way of evacuating the anger boiling under your pink skin. You are mistaking.” He faced the wind, and whispered, “shout.”

            “What?”

            “Shout. Go on. Insult the wind, the rain, the children filling this worthless city. Insult yourself and insult your god, whoever this may be.”

            She stared at him for some instant, and shouted. “Louder” he commanded. She shouted louder. “Louder.” She bit her inner lips.

            “I HATE THIS SHIP!” her voice longed up in the tree, down near the Earth, high in the sky. A group of birds went flying over their heads, absolutely panicked.

            Although he looked more satisfied, Kurloz said, “Louder. Try to rip the inside of your throat white your soul tears your muscles, your skin, and flies with those birds. Come on, dear.”

            Once again, her mouth opened, and roared. The air around her seemed to fracture under the sound, screeching, haunting. She held the flow of energy going from the pit of her stomach to the outside world until her lungs were also screaming, needing oxygen at any cost. The hellish noise stopped, and she had to place a hand on her throat just to check that nothing was bleeding out. Her eyes automatically sought Kurloz’s, astounded. He nodded, his fists clenched, his ribcage widened, his mouth was redirected towards the bright blue sky, and it was his turn to rip the fabric of the universe. Her scream was nothing compared to his, but what was she expecting form the Prince of Mirth and all of the Dark Stuff? She joined him quickly enough, and together they howled for a long time, the wind gulfing in their throats like a mad storm at sea. One deep, wide roar, one screeching, high-pitched scream were combined into a blare that the Devil could not have achieved with his herd of infernal trumpet players. They stopped when their rage was gone, replaced by a comfortable heat in their stomachs. Sitting on the platform, they took a half hour to contemplate the energy that had just been created. Finally, Kurloz turned towards Meulin, his eyes filled with insane happiness, and gulped “And now, let us produce the most degenerated fanfiction.”

 

* * *

 

 

The grass supporting her back was spinning in a mad hurricane all around her, taking her deep inside the soil, closer and closer to the centre of the earth; when she pointed towards the sky, her arm went deep, deep inside this duvet of blue, singing with the birds and jousting with the clouds.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck.”

“Hmmm.”

“Kurl… K… KKKKkKkkkkKKkkk… ooo…”

“Hmmmmm?”

“…loooooooooo…”

“Yeeah, motha… fuuuu…”

“They laaaaaaaaayd!”

They chuckled faintly, their tired voices rasping their throats.

“Hey… Hey…”

“Yeaaaaaaaah, Baaastttt?”

“They liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiied!” she gurgled with a dramatic voice. And again, the laughter would rise in their lungs and spread through their bodies, infernal sickness.

“What… Why…”

“Caaaaaaaaatnip, Kurlaaaaassssss!”

            “Ooooh…”

            “Iiiiit… Effects…!”

            “It has…”

            “It dooooes have some… uuuh…”

            “Effects!”

            “Yeeeeeah! Effects!”

            She let go of all the concentration she accumulated to achieve this level of communicative skills and let her body fall, deeper and deeper. She felts ants crawling in her stomach, eating her from the inside, digging with their small mandibles into her living flesh. _Heeeeeeey, as long as you don’t mew German, we’re cooooooooool! Yeah lil’ guys! Go on, live in anofur world. Red. I’m red inside. What would you except from the red Mage._

She giggled.

“M… Meulin?”

“Yes.” She tried to raise her head but it suddenly transformed into a shiny, wet rock. She let it fall back to the ground.

            “Vikings were rags.”

            She thought about this simple statement. Repeated the sentence over and over again in her head.

            “Noooo. They were carpets.”

            “Oooooh. Carpets.”

            “Yessh. Purrfectly.”

            Kurloz opened his mouth, rolled on the opposite side, and vomited a pale liquid. Meulin tried to stop the chuckle that was coming out from her lips, and failed.

            “Don’t” he grumbled as he wiped the stain off his mouth. “It isn’t mother fucking fuck fucks… not funny.”

            “It really is”

            “No. Looks like shit mixed with cum. Sorry lill guys, wrong whole,” he said, addressing the vomit on the ground.

            “Would you ride a magic carpet with me?”

            He stared at her, and pushed on his limbs to stand up.

            “Oh nononono” she mumbled, “don’t, you’ll die. Don’t. Stay on the grass with me.”

            Shaking his head, he steadied his stumbling body, straightened his back and spread his arms. “Let’s say it was Christmas.” His mouth seemed heavy, and his tongue seemed too lethargic to be moved, creating a barely understandable pronunciation.

            She shifted on her elbow to meet his eyes, and nodded lightly.

            “Christmas. I’d get out of this nursery. I’d get out of Alternia. _Out_.” He leaned against a tree, and continued. “I’d walk on the fucking sea.”

            “How could you wlkgn… How… you’re not Jesus…”

            “Who gives a shit!” he screamed, “it’s his fucking baydirth. Uhm. Daybirth. Birthday? Birthday! Yeah. And we’re the ones getting presents.”

            “Where’s the logic? I vote for no logic on Crassmass!”

            “Accepted, Leijon. No logic. I can walsk on water if I want. I can even drink fucking faygo without being fucking disgusted by it. Fuck them. No logic day it is.”

            “Yaaaay! Way to go, boy.”

            “Hmmm. What was I saying?”

            “Walking on… uhh…”

            “Ah, yeah. This.” He bit his tongue, reassembling his thoughts although catnip was flooding in extreme quantities in his veins, and continued. “I would cross oceans. To fucking Ali Baba. Kill him. Kill his family. Kill fucking Jasmine. Kill his kids and drink their blood. Spread my righteous mirth all over those pagans’ asses.”

            “Hmm.” Meulin found herself guiltily enjoying this part of the story. She decided to ignore it.

            “And take the carpet. Then we can both take some holidays on it and sing like dramatic buttholes. Because that’s who we both are.”

            “Am not!”

            “Ah ah ah. Don’t deny it.”

            She groaned softly as he sat next to her, cross-legged. “Where do you want to go?” His eyes were dilated.

            “Why would I want to go anywhere? I’m happy here. There’s plants and cats and blue walaffs. Laffles. Waffles. I love this place. I _love_ it. Look, I’m gonna punch you to prove it.” She approached her fist very slowly to Kurloz’s shoulder. “Here it coooooooomes.”

            “Oh gods. No. Clawfucker, I don’t want to die. Nooooo.”

            “Pchoooooooooo”

            “Don’t make me bleed to death.”

            “Powwwww.” Her fist exploded against his shoulder. “You’re dead.”

            “Dayum. Was not eshpexing this. Who will save me now.”

            “Ask Santa Claus.”

            “Why would I do such a thing. I would rather jump on the milky way.”

            “ASK SANTAAAAAAAAA! He can give you back your life.”

            “I don’t believe in his fat ass. Religion, right.”

            “Booooooooring.”

            “Tsssk. Where do you want to go?”

            “Mmmmmmmilky way. Good idea. Yes. This. Whatever it is.”

            “You don’t know? Bastet – stop laughing – h-hey, hush. You don’t know what milky way is?”

            “I don’t! Isn’t this hilarious?” she puffed between her teeth.

            “Liar. Liar. I accuse you of… liar… liaring. Yeah. You know. The stars and shit?”

            “Oh right!”

            “You see?”

            “… No” she exploded into a heavy, rough laugh that soon made her tear up from the pain. “Seriously. Milk. In the sky. You’re not an astrologer, sir Makara, art thou?”

            “Heeeey, sister”

            “There’s no milk in the stars.”

            “Yes there is.” He covered her mouth with his hand, stopping any noise coming out of it. “Milk. Spread out on the sky. Probably coming from a fucking cosmic cow or some shit. Anyways. Every night, cats come and (he took his other hand and stared at it as if it was his soul mate, reunited after many decades by a merciful god, and licked it slowly) and drink it. No, stop talking. They drink, every – won’t you shut the fuck up? – every single night. All the cat gods. All of them. (he took his hand off Meulin’s mouth) Is this where you want to go?”

            She pretended to be in awe for a few moments, before brutally slapping his forehead. “I’m high as furck on cat shit, Purrloz. And I still know that milk is baaaaaaaaad for cats. You ignorant specimen.” She rounded her back and hissed at him. “Make me anofur joint. Catnip doesn’t last long, does it. And no more glabberaring about cosmic cows. Efurry one know that it’s a cosmic turtle.”

            “Turtle milk?”

            “Yup.” She nodded gladly. “Yup.”

            His hand struck her forehead, maybe a little lighter than her hit. “Turtle milk it is then, friend.”

 

* * *

 

 

            Meulin’s eyes opened in a fog of dramatic darkness, wondering whether she had fallen in Kurloz’s mind. She clenched her fists, realising that her body was still horribly stiff due to his maleficent techniques used during combat. _It’s ok. He still has those scars_ , she thought with a pinch of honour.

            She shifted into a more comfortable position, feeling the grass rub against her bare skin. The realisation that it was _really fucking cold_ sprouted in her mind. Her sight adjusted and the forest slowly appeared around her. Rolling and pushing the ground away, she saw Kurloz’s body lying next to her, eyes wide opened.

            “Hey you creep.”

            “Such an unpleasant vocabulary, dear.”

            “Clap your snout. You were lying next to me, awake, and you did not wake me up.”

            “Do you think I am the freakishly gorgeous vampire listening to your snores all throughout the night, because he secretly worships it?”

            “I don’t snore.”

            “You do. But I have to admit, it resembles more to a soft purr.”

            “A bitter lie.”

            “Indeed.”

            She stretched and yawned, taking her time. “Is it the middle of the night?”

            “No, the sun barely set two hours ago. You have slept seven mother fucking hours.”

            “And you were up the whole time?”

            “Dozing” he shrugged.

            “And how… how much catnip did we smoke?”

            He smiled enigmatically. “A total of ten joints. Well-charged.”

            “Furry well. I apurrove. I enjoyed it. Quite diffurent from weed, though. You know, the weed that’s in your room but that we can’t smoke???”

            “It’s my brother’s. I am strictly forbidden by our lord Father to touch it, smell it, use it in any ways.” He stood up, stuck his chest out, and raised his chin. The voice that he took was deep, calm, yet terrifying, a thunder coming from far far away that would rip every single sailor of any hope of getting back to earth alive. “Kurloz Makara. If the mere thought of stealing it from Gamzee arises in your pathetic little head, I swear on my soul that the Messiahs’ wrath shalt fall upon you like a hundred racing horses. Do not disappoint me in any way, or I myself shall wait in front of the doors of the Holy Planet and, upon your arrival, throw you into the Vast Nothingness for eternity.”

            “This… was your catter?”

            “My father, indeed.”

            “Well, I get where the drama comes furom now” she said with a glorious grin. “What’s the Holy Planet?”

            “The equivalent to Heaven in our noble cult.”

            “So the Vast nothingness would be--”

            “Hell, yes.”

            “How can a man be so furightening and so ridiculous at once” she gasped.

            “A gift from the Gods.”

            “Of course” she mocked, “of couuuuuuuuurse.”

            The common living room was crowded when they set a foot inside, eating pieces of bread that the cook had agreed to let them take after a remonstrance that longed during seven minutes and twenty three seconds, in which the chef had exposed to them a detail argumentation of how coming late to meals harmed the whole community, yes, perfectly, don’t grin like an idiot, it harms every single one of us here.

            Meulin took her time, chewing slowly, and tactfully explored the action that was going on in the vast room. The pillows that usually stood in a glorious pile at a one of its corner were scattered all around, in the joyous arms of the teens and stacked one over another into two walls forming two half-circles, both at each end of the room, facing each other.

            “PILLOW FOOOOOOOOORTS!!!” Roared Meulin as she pulled the closest pillow that was lying on the ground. “Yes yes yes yes YEEEEEEEEES!”

            Kurloz wrapped his hands around her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “The rules are the following: if you encounter the shame of falling at the hand of an enemy, you will need to lie down in you respective fort for a total of five mother fucking minutes. When all the members of a team have fallen, then the other team wins the righteous game. Do you understand?”

            “I do!! Now let me gooooo!!!”

            “I shall provide a new resourceful mother fucking mind to the other team, then.” She hit him hard in the stomach, but he didn’t even flinch and walked peacefully to the other fort.

            Aradia threw herself in the protective cocoon of feathers, gasping. She stretched a hand towards Meulin. “Meulin… I… Have been touched, I… Eridan… he…” all expression flew out of her eyes as her hand fell on her side, while the other one stood there, tearing up.

            “Aradia no! Why? We had so much more to mew about!” She cupped her face into her palm, impressed by Aradia’s effective roleplaying, whispered with a broken voice “I shall avenge you.”

            She jumped over the wall, rolling on the floor and quickly pushing herself up. She send Kankri hurtling against the wooden wall with a swift movement of her pillow, and screamed Terezi’s name at the top of her lungs.

            “Are you looking for me?” the proud boy pushed his hipster glasses up his nose, a proud expression lightening up his face.

            “Purrderer!”

            She attacked first, jumping, brandishing her pillow as a flag that will surely lead her to victory, and slammed it against the thin boy’s body with all her soul pushing it towards him. He moved swiftly, avoiding the deadly blow, and attacked her on the side, throwing his sweet weapon against her ribs. Meulin cackled – this kid really didn’t have any strengh, it was quite ridiculous to see him gesticulate around. Her leg swayed towards his, tripping him over, and Aradia suddenly appeared in her field of view, striking the final hit with the pillow which lead him to the ground, his glasses slightly twisted.

            “You’re alive!”

            “It takes more than this to break me” she winked.

Meulin pulled his arm and lifted him up as easily as she thought it would be, and as soon as he was back on his feet she turned around to defend her back, that Aradia was already protecting. Back to back, the began rotating, destroying anyone who would dare approach the deadly circle their swinging pillows formed.

“Our team is loosing!” she heard Aradia shout. “We can’t let them die! Come on!”

She broke the arrangement and pushed everyone on her way, clearing a path for her and Meulin to take through the mass of sweating bodies at war with one another. Indeed, there were a lot of puffing and panting people behind the protection of the fort, the certainty of loosing this battle in their sorry eyes.

“Listen everyone, we need a plan!” Aradia’s eyes shone with the pleasure of taking over leadership. They all agreed, while on the other side of the wall victory was celebrated with enthusiastic shouts.

“They’re very strong” grumbled a tall kid.

“That’s why we need a plan, genius” snapped Terezi.

“I think I know.” Aradia leaned closer to the rest of them and whispered a few sentences, clear, concise. It was not an order, rather a proposition, but they decided unanimously that is was perfect.

“Who’s going out?”

“I will” proposed Terezi.

“They will annihisslate you.”

“I don’t care. I’m much more resistant than the lot of you.” A few nodded with a knowing smile shining on their hopeful faces.

“Little pig, little pig,” danced Dirk’s voice right behind their protection, “let me come in.”

Terezi slipped a terrifying grin on her face, and disappeared behind the mass of pillows.

“No, no,” she responded, “By the hair of my chinny chin chin, I will not let you come in.”

“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.”

“You will need to step on my body first” cackled her voice.

A loud thump came to Meulin’s ears, the distinguishable sound of a pillow brutally hitting a body, but the blind girl did not seem to flinch, to Dirk’s greatest disappointment – she remembered how Terezi’s position always seemed so stable. Aradia waved her hand, indicating to the cat girl that it was time to set the plan into motion.

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

“No, no. By the hair of my chinny chin chin, I will not let you come in.”

“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.”

Another hit, and still she did not move of an inch. She stood there, her feet firmly stuck to the ground.

“Little pig, little pig…” This time, every single voice of Dirk’s group joined in the sadistic scenery. “Let me come in.”

“No, no. By the hair of my chinny chin chin, I will not let you come in.” Her voice shone with pride.

“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.” This time, Dirk did not manage his strength. The muscles in his arms stretched, the pillow slashed the air, and she was finally projected to the ground, her desperate fall cheered by her enemies.

They ran into the wall, destroying the precious construction with rage, only to find no one there. Terezi’s cackle reached Dirk’s ears, and his eyebrows frowned. “What?”

“The door” sighted Eridan. “It’s opened. Those bastards must have slipped out.”

“Is this even allowed by the rules?”

They eventually ventured outside cautiously, looking left and right for an attacker. They could not have left, not in the middle of a battle. Honour was a vital part of life in Alternia.

“And what do we do now?” grumbled one of them, when they were all out in the cold wind and the sounds of the night.

“I don’t know. We wait?”

“I don’t wvant to vwait forever. I actually havwe a life, and responsibilities that invwolwve bigger things than tripping a fewv kids for no other reasons than to pretend to have a social life, because if I vwere to…”

“Shut up, Cronus.”

“Yeah, nobody gives a shit, Cronus.”

“Go to hell, Cronus.”

Dirk walked left without any warning, quickly followed by the others who mutely designated him as their chief. They only took a few steps before they were attacked form their enemies hiding wherever they could – in the bushes, behind the other walls of the building, crouching on the ground, hiding behind the trees. A third of Dirk’s party fell in the first attack, a look of surprise on their face, their minds being to slow to raise their pillow and defend themselves. Meulin swirled her pillow around her body, interested in finding someone on particular rather than forcing anyone to the ground. It was not hard to find a giant in a mass of dwarves; lightened by the torches she saw him spinning graciously around a group of five tall teenagers desperately trying to pull him down, sliding between bodies, slithery like a thread of water trespassing cracks of a wall. He would never attack directly, rather preferring to use the other’s strength against him or herself, pinning them down one after the other with theatrical moves. “Someone really needs to take Kurloz down!” Shouted a voice in the mess of sweat and excitement. “I’ll do it!” thundered Meulin. _I will be his downfall._ Her cheeks brightened when she realised how clichéd this sentence was.

Kurloz changed his style of combat as soon as she was there, steaming in front of him. Where others could only be one or the other, she was both agile and ferocious; winding around her body would have probably resulted in his defeat. She knew the difficulty she was to him, and felt honoured and proud to have such a special position. _A special position_. The words stayed stuck in her head for some time, floating about.

They circled around each other for some time, launching a few attacks trying to get past the other’s defences, wriggling their eyebrows and throwing absurd animal screeches. She looked around as a decision was forming in her mind.

She threw her feathery weapon on the ground and, taking the opportunity given by Kurloz’s surprised look, snapped his, taking care of slapping his face with it one last time before throwing it to the ground. The dispossessed giant stared at her with an expression that meant precisely, “what now?”

She knew this was to be done quickly. Turning around, she pushed his chest while brutally kicking his feet in the opposite direction, destabilising him suddenly, but caught him at the very last moment, both hands pressing against his back. Face to face, they broke into a confident laugh, looking into each other’s eyes without letting go. The world stopped all around them – no, not in a romantic way, the world had actually stopped. All around her, kids were dropping their pillows, all eyes directed towards the same direction with o-shaped mouths. Kurloz pushed himself back on his feet. She cursed their surroundings for disturbing such a precious moment, refusing to let go of his eyes. Someone was screaming hysterically, a young girl. Meulin heard a few words. Message, fourty, night raid, soldiers, they’re coming. Brace yourselves. Brace yourselves.

Her words created an electric current flowing through the earth, filling every single one of them. Their bodies stiffened, the sudden jolt of an unutterable excitement flooding in their bones and muscles. They all looked around, wondering if it was actually happening.

It was, indeed, actually happening.

Meulin gripped Kurloz’s tee shirt with all the strength her thin fingers could assemble; his trembling hands cupped both sides of her neck. Her body felt totally and utterly out of her control, and she was quite certain it was his case too.

Their lips met feverishly. She bit his until blood dripped on her tongue, and felt him smile; the energy contained in their chests exploded, filling them with anger and strength throughout their furious embrace.

 

* * *

 

 

“Where were you?”

“I had to get something in my--”

“You don’t cat it, do you. I meant, where were you. You know. Insert a sharp accusative sentence here with a tone that makes you feel guilty. You don’t just run claway from a khiss. It freaked me out.”

He sniggered, and opened his hand to reveal a small box incrusted with precious stones. “I needed to get this from room.”

“Oh my god, this is so purrecious.” She held it in her palm, amazed with the beauty of the object.

“The splendour of such objects has been mother fucking lost since the start of the civil war. Why should we build magnificent pieces of art, when there are so many mouths to feed, so many weapons to be distributed.” He placed it back into the depths of his pocket.

“That is sooooooooo true, Purrloz! I’ve nefur realised how ugly our efurryday life has become. Wow. That’s impurressive.”

“I thank you! Come,” he offered, “for I must find my brother.”

“All right, let’s do this.”

They walked around the city with great difficulty, as Alternia’s state was presently comparable to an anthill right after the terrible attack of a stick thrown by a ten-year-old child. Kurloz, however, did not seem importuned.

Karkat came across the two of them, pointing an aggressive finger towards her. “You’re not coming with us out there. You’ve been training for two weeks only, you’re not going out there.”

“Stop snapping around, crabby knight. She is what some would call a fucking natural. Her battle skills are stupendous.”

“But”

“No. Does your capable mind really believe this battle will be heroic? Perilous? I strongly advise you rethink it. It is forty of them against a hundred of us, young and twisted motherfuckers, warriors. It shall be a child’s play, nothing more than a small event that will thankfully pull us out of the boredom of Alternia. She is coming.”

Without any further discussion, the two of them continued their search.

They found Gamzee in the overly crowded armoury, sitting on a bench while he was putting a bulletproof vest on. Next to him was sitting an overexcited Tavros, shaking nervously, wondering if he will prove himself, out there, in the big bad world.

“First battle?” asked Meulin with a comforting smile.

“Y… Yes” mumbled Tavros.

She extended her hand towards his; “Me too.”

He seemed to hesitate before shaking it with a surprisingly strong grip. “Sorry, was I holding your hand, uh, too tight? I never, I never know how to do an appropriate, handshake”

“That was great, little lion!”

“Yeah, haha, thank you. But, uh, you know, with my condition and all (he pointed his legs), I don’t know if they’ll let me fight, so, yeah,”

“They will. You are as strong as a bull.”

He rubbed his thigh worryingly. “It’s a pity, that I didn’t have the occasion to, uh, fight, while they were still operational.”

“It’s all cool, bro! I’ll be pushing your cart through winds and storms as if my motherfucking life depended on it.”

Tavvros looked at his friend with thankful eyes as Meulin whispered in the ear of Kurloz, “Why is Tavros here? I don’t see the logic in accepting a fighter with a handicap.”

“They desperately seeked my help to cure them from their traumas; I agreed to join this wicked city only if my brother was accepted, and he agreed to enter in this circus solely if Tavros accompanied him. They both turned out to be great warriors.”

He turned towards his brother and kneeled. “I shall bless you now.”

Gamzee put on a solemn face and bent his head. The older Makara opened the small box, in which a shining powder was glistening in the neon lights. Meulin watched the whole ritual, right in between a state of utter wonder and absolute hilarity.

Kurloz took a pinch of powder, and without any sign of warning, threw it right against his brother’s face. She had to place her hand over her lips to contain her laughter.

“May the mirth of the Messiahs cradle you, carry you, may their righteous wrath spark the thirst for blood hidden in the deepest corner of your soul. May their protection surround you through the peril that awaits us.” He raised and placed his hand on Gamzee’s forehead, his eyes closing slowly. Meulin was impatiently waiting for the final words.

“Bless you, mother fucker.” Her laugh erupted brutally, ugly and echoing in the underground room. The giant didn’t quite seem to mind. He smiled to her, and gave the powder to Gamzee who did the exact same thing to him.

Rubbing the drops of tears that had appeared in the corners of her eyes, she began running towards the gates of their fortress as the room began to empty.

It was a funny sight, a hundred people standing close enough for any boner to be instantly spotted through the layers of clothes and armour, yet not a sound to be heard. They were all waiting, patiently, for the group of soldiers who had dared approach their sanctuary. She realised how calm and concentrated everybody looked like, while a few minutes ago the thrill could almost be physically felt. She saw Aradia standing close to Sollux, hand in hand, yet it did not stop her from (silently) jumping in Aradia’s arms.

The young girl hugged her with enthusiasm, before whispering at her ear “You two should go to the front, with the older people. We’re waiting until they open the gates to surprise them, and then…” She pushed herself out of their embrace, and looked straight into Meulin’s eyes when she said, “and then we rip them apart.”

The girl with a tail agreed, and, after communicating the information to Kurloz, they began to open up a way towards the front of the ghostly crowd. Right in front of the gates, a series of big, bulletproof shields were held by some of them, providing a complete protection to the teenagers behind it against the incoming bullets, fired by the army’s guns. They all had additional bulletproof jackets, and a cannon gun stuck on their backs in case their own weapons were not enough. Most of them used their own personalised weapons; in theory, they were supposed to use solely guns and artillery in case of an attack, their usual training weapons being nearly always weaker than bullets, but the number of enemies was so reduced and the task so easy that they decided to use their own. Meulin was aware that it was not a proper battle, she knew that is was just a game, a theatrical play so that the inhabitants of Alternia could have the action that had been promised to them since they enrolled.

They arrived to the gates exactly when a few voices could be heard. “What on earth is this bullshit?”

“Oh, you’re right! There _was_ something that we couldn’t identify on the maps situated around here…”

Meulin breathed steadily. Her muscles were weary, but not too tense; she knew that everyone around her felt the exact same way. The calm before the storm, settled in every single one of them.

She was ready.

“Open the door” murmured Karkat’s voice.

Two of them slipped away, past the semi-circle of shields, and pulled the huge doors towards the inside.

The expression on the soldiers’ eyes was priceless.

Karkat roared. Kurloz roared. She roared. A hundred shouts rose together, the cry of a single monster.

They all moved forwards at once, and so the attack was launched.

The shield wall was quick to encircle the troupe of grown men that were watching in astonishment. A few bullets rebounded on the shields, hurting their owners as it bounced back; Alternians were waiting behind the protection, jumping on their feet impatiently. Once the soldiers were squeezed in a circle of shield, Karkat raised his hand in the air, shouting “Keep them trapped, open the wall!” A few openings were made by the ones holding the shields; this was the fatidic moment. If you stood in the opening, they would shoot you. But if no one was filling these openings, then the soldiers would just escape. Meulin precipitated herself inside of this living hell, finding herself in the middle of soldiers that barely had enough space to breath, followed by a stream of teenagers that had infected the group of adults. She instantly understood the brilliance of the plan: with soldiers all around her, they would not dare to shoot her, as they had the risk of shooting one of theirs. They had to fight with a small knife that was provided in their uniforms, and Lord English’s soldiers were known to suck at fighting with guns, and even more with knives.

Meuin stabbed a soldier in the eye when he tried to strangle her, and the small moment of panic disappeared when she felt her friends flowing next to her, ripping the life out of those unfortunate soldiers. She laughed compulsively, caught an arm wearing a uniform and bit in it, right before thrusting her hand into the guts of the man who had screamed when the blood of his arm had began to flow. She felt a stinging pain to her left, but the soldier that had cut a deep wound on her side was already bathing in his own blood on the floor, killed by another raging teenager. She smashed his head with her foot, and felt the adrenaline rush twirling insanely in her mind.

This. This was where she belonged. In between her enemies, the taste of their insides filling her mouth, sweat damping her clothes and an inexplicable fury keeping her steadily on her legs. The power of life and death she was holding in her bare hands was a feeling that she never wanted to let go of.

She waltzed with many of them, occasionally wounded, but never enough to fall. She realised she was wrong. It was not a game, it was so much more.

She was finally alive.

Then the tip of a cannon gun pressed on the back of her skull.

She could feel the steel trembling behind her. She wanted to scream, to hiss, to turn around and kill whoever dared to put her in such a position.

The most logical outcome was to raise her arms slowly, and to surrender – she was perfectly aware of this fact. But she did not. She would never accept to be… _dominated_ in such ways.

Her made a gurgling sound, and the weapon fell to the ground right next to her, quickly followed by its owner. She crawled a few step away from him, realising how terrified she actually was. Panting, she stared at the weapon stuck in the soldier’s back, a golden trident; Meenah came and pulled it away from the corpse, with a squishing sound. Meulin opened her mouth to thank her profusely, but no sound came out. The other girl smiled. Raised her trident. Threw it.

Meulin realised that the trident was coming closer and closer to her. Was it coming… Towards her? She did not take the luxury to think it through, and rolled away from the weapon that went deep inside the thigh of the soldier right behind her.

She was pretty sure this was directed towards her body, and no one else’s.

Meenah definitely seemed disappointed. She shrugged and, without throwing one single look towards Meulin, flew back into the fight, where the last soldiers were being massacred.

She grabbed her hair in a desperate attempt to understand what it all meant. Why would Meenah try to… to kill her? Meulin _liked_ her. She liked everybody. Why would anyone of her own camp try to kill her?

She realised that the battle was coming to an end, and that she should kill a few soldiers before it was definitively over. Gunshots were exchanged between the two teams, but the effective of soldiers was small and the issue was quickly resolved by Jake. The few soldiers still alive were running around, followed by dozens of teenagers who did not have enough action for the day. Some, lying on the ground, were spending their last moments screaming while a few Alternians were torturing them, a peaceful smile on their faces.

Meulin shrugged. Oh well, she did get to kill quite a lot of people today, and god did she love it.

She stood up and began walking around, hands into her pockets and a smile that she couldn’t exactly control. Kurloz was squat next to a half-alive soldier with a couple of his friends, shrieks occasionally released from the victim’s mouth. Meulin continued walking without paying much attention to them, still trying to grasp what had just arrived.

Karkat was sitting on the ground, head resting against his hands. She stood next to him, and blunted happily, “Karkat! Oh my god Karkat, we won! How clawsome is that?”

He let out a deep, painful sight, before standing up in front of her.

“NO WE HAVEN’T FUCKING WON!”

All the Alternians around turned their heads towards the duo, wondering if they were aloud to be so optimistic if their chief seemed to be carrying all the misery of the world on his bear shoulders.

“How the fuck did they know where our camp was? If they fucking know where it was then I can assure you that the whole fucking army knows, the whole fucking world knows up to lord English’s butthole. My brother didn’t answer to my calls. He hasn’t been answering for a week now. Do you know what this means?

She felt very weak very suddenly. She shook her head, slowly.

“It means that if the main resistance keeps ignoring my calls, we are as good as dead.”

He turned around and walked furiously back inside of the city.

A quiet desperation had replaced the happy laughter. She realised that the only sounds were coming from a group of people forming a small circle, a few steps away from her.

Sollux was crying over the dead body of Aradia.

A thought rose in Meulin’s mind. A few chuckles began to shake her chest, and then a loud laughter shook her entirely, attracting several reproachful looks of Aradia and Sollux’s friends.

Aradia’s job was to build coffins for the deceased.

Who would build her coffin, now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAHAHA Well that was boring. Except for the part where I got to kill someone. That was fun.  
> Anyway, if you are reading this note, it means that you have gone through sixty pages of my horrible grammar, cheap writing techniques and weak plot. I have no idea of whether to congratulate you or to pity you, but in both cases, you have my eternal gratitude.
> 
> Radioactive Ricecake

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here it is! I quite enjoyed writing that, essentially because all my favourite characters are generally happy. Also, I got to kill half of the characters of homestuck before even starting the story. That was sweeeeeeet.  
> Oh, and this is my first fanfiction by the way!! Soooo please leave a comment, tell me what are your thoughts about it, how I could improve it, blablablaaaaah.  
> More chapters coming soon! :3  
> Have a good day, Ladies and Gentlemen and other non-binary folks! :D  
> -Radioactive Ricecake


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